


Talk Shows on Mute

by avocadomoon



Series: Talk Shows on Mute [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Canonical Character Death, Closeted Character, M/M, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:34:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27156680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avocadomoon/pseuds/avocadomoon
Summary: Richie gets a divorce, spends a few weeks in the desert, and works through some shit. What that shit is, exactly, is between a man, his ex-wife, and his friend Mike's deck chair.
Relationships: Beverly Marsh & Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Mike Hanlon & Richie Tozier, Sandy & Richie Tozier, Sandy/Richie Tozier
Series: Talk Shows on Mute [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1982258
Comments: 32
Kudos: 170





	Talk Shows on Mute

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings for: references to Stan's death in canon, suicide/suicidal ideation (including a reference to the specific circumstances of Stan's suicide, albeit projected onto another character in this role swap AU), and a closeted character in denial having multiple relationships with women (if that's something that bothers you). Title is from [a song by Incubus.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTZ0A5qXNUU)

Richie will not admit this except upon pain of death but he used to watch Eddie's TV show religiously, even way back in the early days, when he was just a lowly guest star on The Sally Jesse Raphael Show, sitting on a beige armchair in an ugly bowtie, dispensing advice to troubled teens. One of Richie's most vivid memories of the late 90s was getting sucked off in a studio apartment in Glendale by a bartender who refused to tell Richie his last name, while Eddie explained ovarian cysts to a captive audience of 28-35-year-old middle-to-upper class white women. (Sadly - understandably - pathetically - it remains one of the best orgasms of Richie's life to date.)

Eddie's act is a bit more updated now. Definitely much more bullshitty. At the Jade, everyone had spent a solid twenty minutes giving Eddie some serious shit for the infamous "brush your teeth with strawberry powder to cure your ulcers" episode, and the subsequent outcry that had led to Eddie being disavowed by a solid ninety percent of the medical community. ("Are you even a real doctor, Eddie?!" Bev asked, and Eddie laid his head down on the table and groaned.)

"I don't endorse anything that we feature on the show outright," Eddie told them, with the rote and drill tone of someone who's had to say that a whole fucking lot, "I just invite people on and we _discuss_ things, we have _intellectual debates -_ oh, fuck you Richie, that's not funny - "

Anyway. Like most things post-Derry, it's funny and it isn't, it's hilarious right up until it's not. It makes Richie sort of sad to think about, especially being as familiar with Eddie's career as he is, because way back when, Eddie actually was a pretty good not-doctor. (Medical...advisor? Television pseudonurse personality?) He'd been kind, and allergic to bullshit, which is why Richie had first liked him, back in the day. He was sympathetic and gentle with kids, and he explained medical issues in a way that was both approachable and grave, walking the fine line between too-alarmist and too-casual with ease. He talked a lot about diet - food groups and moderation and finding comfort and joy in food, he told people to think about it as a way to care for themselves rather than a way to punish themselves, which really fucking got to twentysomething fucked-in-the-head closet case Richie. He had big brown eyes and a quicksilver way of talking that got Richie's blood up, even on his worst days. He wore bowties and sweater vests and patterned socks that showed when he crossed his legs and his pant cuffs rolled up. He published a memoir in 2001 that Richie bought at the Borders on La Cienega Boulevard, twenty minutes after they opened on publication day. And on an episode of Oprah in 1999, Eddie firmly and relentlessly told a weeping mother to get her shit together and stop making her son feel bad for having AIDS. (In not so many words.) 

"I don't know where it went wrong," Eddie says, sounding tired like he always does nowadays. Richie feels bad, sitting on Mike's beautiful, warm, mountain-view porch in Arizona, while Eddie paces through the stress-sweats back in Los Angeles. Not like Mike hadn't invited Eddie too, not like Eddie hadn't waved off the multiple invitations to tag along with an increasing air of annoyance, but still. "Actually no, that's a lie. I know where it went wrong. Myra is where it went wrong."

"Not the amnesia?" Richie asks. "Not the part where we forgot our childhoods and then went on to repeat our cycles of trauma for thirty years? Didn't register?"

"I mean," Eddie says. 

"Oh, okay. Blame it on the wife. Fucking typical."

"Ex-wife," Eddie snaps. "I mean, you know what I mean. Come on, Rich."

Richie both hates and loves that Eddie calls him 'Rich' now. He can't remember the last time he heard the last 'ee' syllable come out of Eddie's mouth - he sort of misses it, but Eddie probably thinks 'Richie' is childish. Eddie's the sort of grown up that turns his nose up at cotton candy and video games and everything else that makes life fun, which sort of explains a lot about him as a person - but at least it's better than 'bro.' Richie will take it. "Okay, yeah. I know what you mean. I have one of those too, you know."

"You can't compare Sandy to Myra. That's a total fucking insult to Sandy," Eddie says. He sounds distracted, like he's reading while he's talking. He does that a lot on the phone with Richie, which was sort of offensive at first before Richie realized it meant Eddie was making time for Richie in a way that he didn't with the other Losers, and then it became endearing. "How is she, by the way? You didn't tell me how Thanksgiving went."

"Thanksgiving," Richie says with a sigh. There's some kind of bird on the low-hanging tree on the north side of Mike's deck, and Richie's been watching it peck at something on the branch for the past ten minutes. If Stan were here, he'd probably be able to tell Richie what it's doing, and what kind bird it is, anyway. "It was fine. Her parents hate me, but that's nothing new."

"Do they hate you because you left her, or do they hate you because of your personality?"

Richie laughs, and the bird startles, fluttering away. A few leaves drift down to the deck, dislodged by the sudden movement. "Both."

"Well," Eddie says, deep with ironic sympathy, "that's sad for you." Richie laughs again. "I haven't seen Myra at all. And her parents are dead - her only family is her sister's family, and they live in France. So on one hand, that's great for me, and on the other, I feel sort of guilty because I know she's going to be alone for the holidays." Eddie makes a pained little groaning noise that makes Richie suck his breath in sharply, through his teeth. "Which I know, because she keeps trying to guilt trip me into flying back to New York for Christmas. Fuck."

"Okay. Maybe don't do that," Richie says carefully. 

"Obviously I'm not gonna do that. But she's good at making me feel guilty, and it's only December 2nd."

"Block her number," Richie says, which is something he's suggested dozens of times over the past year. Eddie does what he always does, and snorts. "Come on. It's ridiculous, Eds, you shouldn't even be talking without the lawyers."

"I don't text her back," Eddie snaps. 

"So? You still fucking read them," Richie says. "Just like you read every hit piece, every fucking blog post about yourself, like knowing what people think of you is going to help you become less of a hack. It's like a compulsion."

"Oh thanks," Eddie says dryly. "Love the support, man."

"You literally called yourself a hack five minutes ago. It was one of the first sentences out of your mouth, Eds."

Eddie sighs. "Okay, fair," he says. "I just - Rich, you have no idea how difficult this is gonna be. Do you know how many people work for me? How many people make a living off of my bullshit?" 

Richie rubs his eyes, thinking about Eddie's diet books, which are currently lined up in a sad, chronological line on Richie's bookshelf back in LA. _Get Up and Work! With Dr. K,_ and _Turn YOU Around! Dr. K's Fix-Its,_ and even _Making Food Fun (For Teens!) - foreword by Dr. K!_ "So what? They're grown adults. They'll find work somewhere else." Richie pauses. "Eddie, there's always gonna be an excuse not to do it. If you want to, you can talk yourself into staying right where you are until you die. Is that what you want?"

The silence feels complicated, and Richie holds his breath, listening to the artificial silence on Eddie's side of the line. Richie sometimes misses real phones, the kinds with cords, not because he was particularly attached to the lifestyle he led before the internet, but because he misses being able to hear people's ambient noises as he talked to them. Breath, the radio in the background, a TV playing in someone's living room, their kids shouting and playing in the next room. Cell phones isolate people's voices, in a way that feels sort of sad to Richie, in a vaguely philosophical way. "No. It's not what I want."

"There's no guarantee that you can't keep them employed anyway. You have a built-in audience, dude. You really think all those middle-aged moms who listen to you are going to abandon you in droves if you start giving them _good_ advice? Come on."

"Okay, but the choice actually comes down to apologizing or not," Eddie says. "One option is that I just shut the fuck up about it and change my programming, start talking about the things I actually want to talk about instead of - you know. The second option, which is what everyone desperately wants me _not_ to do, is to be fucking honest for once in my life and apologize for all the, you know. Hack bullshit." Eddie takes a deep breath. "I want to do that one. But - "

"So do it," Richie says, before Eddie can spiral. "It's fine. Figure it out. Just nut up and get it done, man."

Eddie pauses, and laughs. "I should've put that in my last book," he says. "'Just nut up and get it done.'"

Richie blinks, and experiences a lightning-quick flashback of things that never happened: namely, being in Eddie's life in the years they were apart. Giving him shit about his dumb diet books, suggesting stupid titles, visiting him on set, being his friend all along. Then Richie thinks about the wedding photos he'd seen, during some deep-dive Googling, Myra in a lace wedding dress and Eddie in another bowtie, holding hands as they cut their wedding cake together. Publicity shots of them together, being photographed at events, smiling next to Oprah, standing next to each other on stage at charity events, Eddie's speech at the Daytime Emmys: _and Marty, this one's for you. Thank you for everything, sweetheart._ Richie swallows back bile. "Yeah, maybe save it for the next one," he says hoarsely. "Listen Eds, I gotta go. Mike just got back."

"Oh," Eddie says, taken aback, "okay. Do you want to call me back later, or - "

"Yeah sure, I'll give you a call," Richie says, looking up at the white-topped mountains and hating himself. "Maybe not tonight. Mike and I are supposed to have dinner with his editor, something about movie rights, I dunno. Tomorrow? Morning? Ish? What time zone are you in, again?"

"The same one you're in, dipshit," Eddie says, sounding immeasurably fond. "Don't worry, I won't make you wake up before noon. I know you're a thirteen-year-old in a middle aged man's body."

"Do they make pills for that, Dr. K?" Richie asks, and immediately regrets it. "Ah, okay. There he is," Richie lies, "gotta go. See ya, Eds."

"See you," Eddie says, sounding a little forlorn. Richie tries not to feel bad about hanging up. 

Sandy had taken it pretty well, all things considered. The fact that she and Richie had not made any kind of earnest attempt at sex or intimacy, even of the smallest kind, in the past three years probably helped. He always liked to think that they'd gone into it with their eyes open, but maybe that wasn't true. It's hard, even now, to separate truth from fear, reality from the anxious fiction they spun in public, desperately trying to save face in front of people who probably didn't really give much of a shit in the first place. 

She was his producer on his first show, a late-night classic rock hour on an oldies station that was owned by an investor who didn't really give a shit what anyone said on air, so long as it didn't violate FCC fines that would end up on his desk eventually. Sandy was a tough chick, a real ballbuster that made Richie simultaneously want to impress her and hide from her, because (he realizes _now_ ) she reminded him of Bev. They "dated" for six months (read: got dinner together sometimes after work, and didn't correct people's assumptions) until Richie got kicked out of his apartment when his landlord decided to sell the building and move to Florida. 

"Just come stay with me for awhile," Sandy said. She had longer hair back then, dyed brown and curly, and she would wash it in the mornings and wear it in a bun all day, so that it was still damp and fragrant when she'd finally let it loose in the late afternoon, leaning up against Richie's shoulder as they waited for the bus outside the studio. "I have the room. I could definitely use the help with rent. Do you snore?"

"Don't think so," Richie said, because he really didn't know. Nobody had really stuck around long enough to tell him either way. "You?"

"Loud as fuck," Sandy said. "You can wear earplugs. I won't be offended." And so that was that. 

They didn't have sex often, and when they did it was mostly Richie going down on her, which Sandy felt sort of guilty about but not guilty enough to make him stop. She was touchy about being touched, prickly about intimacy, and Richie wasn't exactly comfortable himself, for a myriad of reasons. They got married on New Year's Eve in 2005, and bought a condo together a few weeks later, a decision which made both sets of parents sigh in relief, as if they'd been waiting for the ball to drop somehow. Sandy's mom was a dentist, just like Richie's dad, so the family get-togethers always went well. They split holidays - one year in Texas with Sandy's family, the next with Richie's parents in South Carolina - and they shared a car for years with very little conflict, which was really something, considering they lived in LA. Sandy got a job as an executive at KROQ-FM, and Richie started getting notoriety for the show he developed with Ranveer Malhi over at KPCC, which became a podcast, which meant podcast money, which meant they could afford to move, which meant a bigger house, which meant separate bedrooms. Then Richie and Ranveer got an endorsement from NPR, and a grant, and Sandy got a promotion, and they bought the vacation place out in Colorado. She'd spent a lot of time out there, up in Aspen, working remotely on a fairly regular basis, once she had the freedom. Richie let her have it in the divorce, and she's still living there now. She still sends Richie regular, friendly photos of the renovation on the second floor.

It all just felt very normal, unremarkable. Richie regarded her like a beloved roommate more than a spouse, for all those years, and he's fairly certain she felt the same. They didn't really talk in any sort of real way - it was always just practical shit. _Did you pay the water bill? Should we get a dog?_ Neither of them proposed - it was sort of comical how that happened, actually, Sandy's sister Margot brought her older (much older - _scandalously_ older) boyfriend to Thanksgiving one year, and at the table in front of everyone he asked Sandy: "so are you gonna keep working, after you're married?" And Richie got mad and said, "yeah asshole, she makes more money than me," and just like that, apparently they were engaged. And once her whole family got that impression, it had felt sort of cowardly to go back on it. 

He misses her, sometimes. It was a holding pattern they were both in, for reasons neither of them really wanted to discuss out loud. Sandy would go through severe depressive episodes where she wouldn't leave the house for weeks, calling in sick to work and leaving Richie to deal with the practicalities of their life - which he did without complaint, obviously, with a vague air like he was doing something wrong, fumbling or mishandling something important. She cried in her sleep, which always made Richie feel like a useless asshole because he was too nervous to wake her up. But she wasn't a bad person. She used to make Richie cupcakes on his birthday, with experimental flavors that he never would've thought would work together: marshmallow and banana. Macaroons baked in the middle. Almond butter with candied blueberries. She gave him good career advice, cheered him up when he went through his own low periods, bought him thoughtful gifts whenever she went out of town on business trips. She cut his hair for him religiously, every month or so, in their kitchen with a pair of antique hairstyling scissors she'd inherited from her grandma. She ironed his clothes. (He actually doesn't miss that, it always felt a little condescending. But her heart was in the right place, so Richie had never said anything.) She called him "honey," which never failed to make him feel warm inside, cared for, looked after. The fact that it was non-specific, that Richie was less in love and frankly just relieved to have someone who would give a shit about him if he drove his car off the side of a bridge - did that matter? Was their absolute, utter lack of passion really that much of a roadblock, in the grand scheme of things? Maybe. Maybe not. 

At dinner at the Jade, Mike had asked, "and what about you, Trashmouth, did you ever get married?" And Richie said, _yeah, actually, I did,_ and the whole table laughed like he'd made a funny joke. The part of Richie that was always terrified of his own feelings was triumphant about rubbing it in, pulling out his phone to show everyone the photo of Sandy he'd snapped a few days earlier, when she was trying on dresses for her cousin's wedding, grinning at Stan and Mike when they teased him about how pretty she was. It felt like he was winning some long-con joke, crossing the finish line with his heterosexual marriage held out in front of him like a trophy, a relieved and arrogant feeling of: _see? Fuck you! You were wrong about me._ But of course, they hadn't been wrong, which was the problem. Richie had known it for a long time, but since he'd been floating through his own life like an uninvolved audience member, he hadn't felt any kind of urgent need to do anything about it. 

A few weeks after Stan's death, Richie caught Sandy in her bathroom, which was probably the most ostentatious room in their house. They'd been unusually involved together when they were building the place - getting excited and peppy like they used to when they worked together, which had been nice - almost like they were close friends again - and Richie had goaded her into this showy bathroom, with its expensive steam shower and big-ass clawfoot tub and the gigantic vanity with installed bar chairs and more counter space than anyone would ever realistically need. It was a joke, but he'd turned out to be right about her needing it, because Sandy spent a lot of time in there - playing music that Richie could always hear from his office downstairs, reading or working or just soaking in her big tub, crying silently for hours like she did when she was alone. (She never admitted to it, but Richie could always tell. He saw it on her face.)

"Are you happy?" Richie asked, sitting on the floor next to her bathtub. Sandy was floating with only her toes sticking out of the water, her dark hair gathered together in a messy, lopsided ponytail. The end of it was in the water, soaking wet and plastered against her collarbone. "Like, are you happy with the way we live?"

Sandy shrugged. Her face was bleak. "I don't know that I ever," she said, and then she started to cry, which made Richie feel so low he might as well be in hell. He never tried to comfort her when she was upset - when she was in a really bad place she had a tendency to lash out until he left her alone - but he felt suddenly and intensely ashamed of himself for that, that he'd been so complacent that he'd just left her alone all these years, turned his face away, sighed sadly and tried to ignore the sound of her pain, drifting down through the vents from the second floor. "Shit, I'm sorry. Sorry." She rubbed one of her eyes, shrugging irritably. "I've thought about that question a lot, the last few years."

"Me too," Richie said thinly. He rubbed his face, feeling his own tears threatening too, building up behind his eyes like an oncoming storm front. 

"I guess I," Sandy said, and paused to rub her eye again. Her eyeliner was streaked all over her cheeks. The water had to be cold by then; they'd been sitting there, talking, for almost an hour. But she didn't look affected by it. "I always sort of, I thought it would be worse. The life I would end up with, I mean. I always had these thoughts in the back of my head, like there was this...this tragic ending coming up for me. Like nothing _specific,_ but I just felt like - like a character in a horror movie. Like I was always just biding time until I got axe murdered, or something." She sniffed, and Richie reached up and touched her face, feeling more tender towards her than he'd felt in years. Her face crumpled, and she pressed her wet cheek against his hand, with something that felt sort of close to affection. "And then when I met you, and we just sort of...fell into this, I felt so lucky. Lucky to have found a good man, who didn't hurt me. Like I'd dodged a bullet, you know? And I tried to be good to you too, honey. I know I wasn't sometimes, but I did try."

"You _are_ good to me," Richie said, his voice cracking. "Sandy, you know I love you. Right? I don't say it very much but you do know that I love you?"

She nodded, crying again. Richie could feel the warm wetness against his hand. 

"But you deserve better. We both do," Richie said, with a steadiness and confidence that felt like Stan. The memories were still hot to the touch, vulnerable. Stan's face in those last few moments, as he bled to death against the ground. The way Bill had cried after it was over, sobbing his heart out in the water, leaning hard against their arms as they held him up. "We deserve to be _happy_. Like not just - treading water. Or whatever it is we've been doing here."

Sandy leaned her head against the rim of the tub, reaching out to squeeze Richie's hand. It was probably the most affectionate they'd been towards each other, physically speaking, in over a year. 

"I'm sorry," Richie said. "I'm sorry I held you back. I'm sorry I never paid attention, that I never asked what was wrong, or tried to help you more - "

"I wouldn't have let you," Sandy said. 

"I know. But I'm still sorry."

"I'm sorry too," Sandy said, starting to cry again. She looked older when she cried, more like her mother, who had a pinched, wrinkled face, from years of stress from her - frankly - incredibly shitty marriage to Sandy's father, a conservative sitting judge with a deep Texan accent and a gruff, unimpressed demeanor who had always scared the ever-living shit out of Richie. Over the years, the pieces had fallen together for him, things he'd witnessed at that house, the way Sandy reacted sometimes to odd things - she couldn't stand to keep the windows closed, they always had to be open all the time, and she had a panic attack once when they stayed in a basement-level hotel room with a heavy door that locked automatically. She couldn't stand it when Richie touched her lower back. She always had to sleep on the side closest to the door. She threw up and started to hyperventilate the first time they had sex, at the very moment he'd first pushed inside of her - and even in the deepest depths of his repression, Richie hadn't been able to ignore what that meant. The pieces were always there, but for some reason - neither of them were strong enough to put them together. Or do anything about them, besides. "I'm sorry I - that we wasted so much time - "

"It wasn't a waste of time," Richie said, knowing it was true. "Sandy, it wasn't a waste. It was what we needed from each other." And she nodded, leaning up over the edge of the tub to kiss him, crying helplessly into it like they were dying, like they were kissing goodbye before they both shipped off to war or something. Richie will remember that kiss for the rest of his life - the wet press of her face against his, the way her hands shook, how he realized she actually had been shivering that whole time from the cold water and he just hadn't noticed. And wasn't that a metaphor for their entire marriage? Disgustingly poetic. Richie was ashamed of himself, and relieved to finally admit it, on top of everything else. 

Richie hadn't expected it to be sad - which it was, it was devastatingly sad. To sit in that overly cold office and sign paperwork that would divide up the last ten years of their lives, and then get coffee together at the Starbucks down the street like they weren't about to walk away from each other in completely opposite directions? It was sad. Richie still feels sad. They text quite a bit - much more openly than they ever had when they were married - and the affection there will never really go away, which is comforting in a way. Were they ever _really_ married? Richie feels like it was a weird dream, sometimes, especially now, staying in Mike's absurdly nice "getaway home" in Arizona, treading water once again like his shit is going to get together all on its own, without any input from Richie himself. 

He feels nostalgic for the parts that were good - their inside jokes, the cozy feeling of having someone to go to a party with, all the times they made each other laugh - and somehow, a little wistful for the bad parts too, the times when they could go for weeks without talking or seeing each other, the fights, the panic attacks they'd both ignore, the bitter way they'd make fun of themselves with each other, like two soldiers in the middle of a bloody battlefield, cracking black jokes right before they headed back out to the front line. Richie had been better off than Bev, who'd weathered all these years painfully and coldly alone - or Mike, with his string of failed marriages, the most recent one to a snooty actress who still keeps sending him passive-aggressive emails. Poor Bill, stuck in Derry all those years by himself, the only one who remembered and not quite noble enough to forgive them wholeheartedly quite yet. Or Ben with his absurdly evil business partner, who was currently suing him for everything he had. Or Eddie, with Myra. No, Sandy was not anywhere near the same league as Myra. 

Yesterday, as Richie and Mike waited for their Uber Eats driver to navigate the ridiculously long, rich person driveway to deliver their breakfast, Sandy texted him a selfie in front of the sunrise in Colorado, up on a mountain peak somewhere, streaky oranges and reds behind wispy, Van Gogh clouds and her hand, held up in bunny ears behind her own head. _because ur not here to ruin my pictures anymore I gotta do it myself now,_ was her caption, and Richie laughed out loud and showed it to Mike, who grinned like he did when there weren't any strangers around to catch him experiencing emotion. 

"She seems like she's doing well," Mike said, neutrally, because they were all just so aggressively neutral about Sandy, and Sandy and Richie, and Richie's feelings about Sandy and Richie. It was getting old. 

"She needs to get laid," Richie said, just to see Mike's reaction. It was sort of disappointing - he didn't even roll his eyes. "There's this neighbor she has up there, he always had kind of a thing for her. He never hit on her when I was around, but I'm sure he must've made a pass by now. I keep bugging her about it, but she's always been kind of shy, so I dunno."

"Gotta be honest, Richie," Mike said, "feels a little weird that you're talking to her about that. A little self-flagellating."

"Oh, I don't do that," Richie said. "You go blind if you do that. My pastor told me." He did get an eye roll for that one. "It's fine, man. This is how we're going to stay friends. You'll see."

"Do you _want_ to stay friends?" Mike asked, skeptical but gentle, nosy in an affectionate way, how all the Losers were nowadays. They were in each other's shit constantly, poking their fingers into everyone else's business, loud and annoying and Richie loved them so much he couldn't believe he'd gone so long without that feeling. He couldn't believe he'd forgotten how to do it, how to love other people that way. It felt so fundamental to who he was - no wonder he'd felt like a zombie. "You don't actually have to be. I hope you know that."

"I do," Richie said. "But we are. Going to be friends. She's my girl." He grinned down at his phone, at the new glasses Sandy was wearing, bright red frames, long dangly earrings. She'd cut her hair, stopped wearing makeup. When they talked on the phone, she sounded like a completely different person. Richie was sure he sounded completely new, too. "You never had that, man? Not with _any_ of your wives? Like, not even one?"

Mike huffed. "If we could maybe get through _one_ conversation without you bringing up the thrice-divorced thing - "

"Thrice-divorced!" Richie cackled. "They should give you a trophy. Fuckin' - "

"Don't make a Ross Gellar joke."

" - Ross Gellar over here, _thrice-divorced_. Did you even like any of 'em, Mikey? I'm really asking. Come on. Tell your friend Richie." Richie patted his shoulder, sticking it out and gesturing at Mike's head. Mike shot him a disdainful look and kicked his shin. "Ow. Mean."

"My first wife left me for another man," Mike said sourly, squinting up into the sunlight. He did that a lot - like he was trying to blind himself. Richie had to regularly resist the urge to forcibly shove sunglasses on his face. "My second, Sheila, was emotionally distant because she was still hung up on _her_ ex-wife - well, ex-partner, I don't think they were ever legally married, because it was 90s - which meant, of course, that I was hung up _her_ for the duration of my marriage to Anna, which never should've happened in the first place." Mike sighed. "Wrong person, worst timing. That's the story of _my_ love life. So no, I never had that. But it's nice that you do."

Richie bopped him with his phone. "You wanna meet her? I could set up a blind date, or something. She's really great, you know." 

Mike shot him an absolutely _appalled_ look, which got Richie cackling again. "Wha - Rich - no. _No._ What the fuck - "

"Hey, it was just an offer," Richie said, laughing so hard it didn't even hurt that much when Mike kicked him again. Which was just vindictive, really. Not that Richie didn't deserve it. 

In line at the Albertson's the next morning, Richie picks up a gossip magazine with Eddie's name in one of the headlines and flips through to the article, which is of course about the divorce. The leading narrative at the moment is that Eddie had left Myra for Bev, which is extremely funny to everyone except Eddie and Bev. The article has a picture, almost eight months old, of Bev and Eddie in line at a Starbucks in New York, and the writer (the term being used loosely, in this context) seems to be trying to imply that they've moved in together. Inserted in the bottom-right corner is a cut-out unflattering photo of Myra, making a face and holding her cell phone to her ear. MRS. K DEVASTATED: "MY HUSBAND IS SHACKED UP WITH A MODEL!" 

Of course he texts it to Eddie. Eddie replies almost instantly with a string of exclamation marks and a text, a couple minutes later, that says: _that shit will rot your brain._

_You mean your diet books? Lol I know,_ Richie sends back. Eddie replies immediately again with more exclamation marks. 

Bev calls a few hours later, while Richie is making bacon frittatas at the stove for lunch (which Mike always turns his nose up at right before he goes back for seconds) and listening to the final edit of the new podcast episode, which Ranveer had kindly edited by himself, on account of Richie taking a few months off to get divorced and hide, hermit-crab style, in the wilds of Arizona. Richie had white-knuckled through their interview with Jack Antonoff, two weeks out from D-Day and holding onto his professionalism with the tips of his fingers, and Ranveer finally pulled him aside and told him to get the fuck out of town before he went postal on somebody. 

("We'll email," he'd said. "Skype. Whatever. Don't worry about it. For fuck's sake, man, go get a massage. You look like shit." Ranveer was a smart guy. Richie signed himself up at a day spa, his first day in Arizona.)

"That name sounds familiar," Bev says, her voice echoing a little in the kitchen, on loudspeaker on Richie's phone. "Is he the guy who married Mandy Moore?"

"That's Ryan Adams," Richie says. 

"Oh right," Bev says absently, as if she has the first clue who that is. "Okay, is he Britney Spears-adjacent? I feel like he reminds me of Britney Spears somehow."

"Closer," Richie cajoles. "Think...Bleachers. Think Fun - the proper noun, not the adjective. Think...Lorde at the Barclays Center, singing _Liability._ "

"It's like you're just saying random words at me," Bev says. "Like Mad Libs for music nerds. Is Bleachers a band?"

"You know, the funny thing is that I don't even _like_ pop music," Richie says, carefully lifting the edge of the frittata with one of Mike's fancy spatulas, checking the underside. About ready to bake - and, well, shit, he forgot to preheat the oven. "What kind of music do you listen to, Bev? I've been to fashion shows, you know. They play a lot of Lorde there."

"You should come to Fashion Week this year," Bev says cheerfully. "I'll get you a ticket! Lots of hot chicks, bro. I'll introduce you to all my sluttiest friends."

"I notice you didn't answer my question."

"Because you're not going to like the answer to my question," Bev says cagily.

Richie makes a sound of strangled outrage, slamming the spatula down on the counter. "Beverly! Are you one of those people who doesn't _listen to music?_ "

"I'm sorry! I just don't - like, I don't get into it," Bev says, laughing. "I listen to your podcast! I swear!"

"I'm not really sure how that works out for you exactly, considering my podcast is about _the history of music,_ but whatever floats your emotionless, unfeeling boat, Molly Ringwald!"

"I am," Bev says proudly, "too cultured for music. Maybe. I mean, what's up with that anyway. People making, like, noises? With their throats and shit? Clanging sticks against different pieces of wood? Like what the fuck. What's the point."

Nobody can make Richie laugh like Bev can, even now. He'd missed it without even knowing he was missing it. "Good thing the demos I made with my band in college are lost to the sands of time. Talk about throat noises."

"You know you wanna send me those," Bev says cajolingly. "I know you have copies."

"Nah, I burned them actually," Richie says. "Threw 'em in the fire with Eddie's inhaler, and your postcard. Gone for good, now."

That goes over like a lead balloon. Bev clears her throat delicately, and Richie feels like shit. 

"Sorry," he says, and puts the pan in the oven. The door slams shut with a dull sound that still makes him jump. 

"S'alright," Bev says. She clears her throat again. "Are you in therapy yet?"

"I mean, I'm working up to it," Richie says. 

"You should be in therapy, Richie."

"Yeah, well." Richie scratches his chin. He's been growing a Divorce Beard, and it's just starting to get to the itchy stage. "I should be doing a lot of things, maybe." 

Bev hums. She's still in New York, for the time being, although she's been making sounds about moving out West to be closer to the rest of them. Eddie's already met with three different realtors, intent on rebuilding his pseudoscience empire out in LA. (Whatever iteration of it he lands on.) Bill's still in Europe, sowing all his stored-up wild oats, but he's already got plans to stay with Mike once he gets back - the very same bedroom that Richie is currently rubbing his elbows all over. The future spins out in front of them like a messy, unshoveled sidewalk - harrowing to navigate, maybe, lots of suspicious puddles and potential hazards, but clearly marked for the first time in their lives. Well-lit and obvious, for once. "You still talking to Sandy?"

"Yeah."

"Good. That's good."

"Mike doesn't seem to think so. I think he thinks we talk a little too much," Richie says. He sets a timer for eight minutes, crosses his arms across his chest, wonders idly if he sounds defensive. "What do you think?"

Bev snorts. "I'm hardly the right person to come to for relationship advice, Richie."

"You're smarter than me," Richie says. "I don't see the problem."

"I've never made it past three months. Did you know that?" Bev sounds a little strained, almost like she's embarrassed. At the Jade, when they'd landed on her for the _so are you married_ catch-up, she just blushed and shook her head, looking at Richie of all people from beneath the fringe of her bangs. Richie remembers feeling inexplicably bruised at the gesture, hurt somehow by the fact that it was him she'd looked at, like he'd been singled out in some way that felt cruel, even if he didn't remember why. Of course later he'd remembered, and realized, but at the time - it was just one more thing to feel weird about. "I knew there was something wrong with me. I knew it was me that was the problem. But I felt so safe by myself, and when I was around men - men who liked me, who might have loved me - I just - I felt - "

"Yeah," Richie interrupts gently, "I know."

"It would've been so much easier if I'd remembered," Bev says, resigned. "I could've gone to therapy and maybe _dealt_ with it, instead of…" she trails off, frustrated. 

"You know, babe," Richie says, "I think, instead of being embarrassed about it - which you shouldn't be! - maybe think about it like a bullet you dodged. Can you really picture yourself in a relationship that would've been healthy? Without the memories to give you perspective? I mean, shit. _None_ of us managed that. Except for - "

Bev makes a weird, sad noise. _Stan,_ both of them are thinking. 

"He was always the exception to the rule," Richie finishes, strangled. 

Bev takes a long pause before she responds, and Richie imagines her doing those deep breathing exercises that Eddie showed them, in the parking lot of the Townhouse the morning before they left. _A bunch of clinically depressed anxiety disorders in human form,_ Bill said, and Eddie shook his head angrily at them and went through some common coping methods, drill sergeant style, and even made them all practice before he let them go. "Were you and Sandy unhealthy? You always sound so fond when you talk about her. I guess I thought maybe you were an exception, too."

Richie rubs his mouth, watching the timer tick down. Six thirty-six, six thirty-five, six thirty-four. "Beverly, can I tell you something? Please don't tell anyone else."

"Of course, honey," and it's really that word that does it: honey. Richie rubs his face and laughs a little to himself. Predictable. Everything makes more sense in hindsight. Bev had called him that in high school, too. 

"I'm gay, Bev," Richie says, and feels a sensation not unlike a balloon popping inside of his chest. "I'm not attracted to women. I forgot, when I left Derry."

"Oh," Bev says softly. She sniffles a little, loudly across the line. "Oh, okay."

"So weird. Like tragically weird," he continues, "to have literally _forgot_ something like that about yourself."

Bev makes a hurt noise. "We all forgot lots of things," she says forlornly. "I love you, Richie."

"Yeah. I love you too."

"Does Sandy know?"

"Yeah." He swallows thickly. "She - she wasn't mad. It wasn't - I dunno. We still loved each other. Like, it still _counted_." He stares at the glass oven door, streaky with grease. "I slept with men, before I met her, and she knew about that too. But I guess we both just - I kind of just floated through everything, like I was just...not really there, for most of my life. And she did the same thing. I think if we hadn't met, we both would've been way worse off." He takes a deep breath. "That's sad. Like, that's objectively pathetic."

"It's not," Bev says. "Not any more than me, anyway. Who pined for thirty years for someone I didn't even remember." She chokes on the last word, and Richie's heart twists for her. "You don't tell anyone that, either."

"Okay," Richie says. "United in secrets. Like high school all over again." 

"Oh yeah. I forgot about that," Bev says. She laughs suddenly. "Oh shit. Richie, we dated. Like you and I. We _dated each other._ You were my _Prom date._ "

Richie laughs. "Did you literally just remember that?"

"No. But like, I was blocking it out," Bev says, and Richie laughs again. "Bill was so mad. Did he beat you up again? I remember helping you with a black eye once. Maybe eleventh grade?"

This was after Stan moved away. He'd been the first to leave, after That Summer, whisked away by his mother's family after the divorce. Ben was next - leaving a heartbroken Bev behind, nobly silent in her pining already at age fifteen - and then Mike, off to an early college admission in Michigan. Eddie was long gone too, in upstate New York with his mother. By the last two years of school, it was just Bill and Bev and Richie - united in trauma, getting drunk together every weekend. Before Bev and Richie left too, and then it was just Bill, left alone with his ghosts. "I think that was the thing with our English teacher. You remember him? The homophobe who was married to the mayor? He yelled at Bill in front of the entire class for something - I don't remember what exactly - " Bill at seventeen, his chin wobbling but his arms crossed stubbornly, glaring back at the teacher while he got reamed. Richie remembers the anger and helplessness more than anything else, the inability to defend his friend. Like it happened yesterday. "I spit in the teacher's face and they suspended me for three weeks. Then Greg Nelson beat the shit out of me in the cafeteria the day I got back and the teachers saw and didn't even do anything."

"Oh fuck," Bev says. "Yeah, fuck. I remember that now." A dull silence falls. "Fuck that town, Richie. Jesus."

"Bill did get mad about you and me though." Richie strains to remember. He has vague memories of holding her hand at the quarry - kissing experimentally in the backseat of his mom's car - _you can try out whatever you want with me, Richie. We're friends, right? We can just see what it feels like. I trust you, anyway, and I know you trust me._ She'd even taught him how to eat her out, once. That's probably why he was already so good at it when he met Sandy, he realizes, with some amusement. "He was always protective of you. I think he had a thing for you, back in the day."

"No," Bev dismisses. "He was like that with everyone." She pauses. "He told me not to break your heart. I just remembered that! Oh my God." She sputters with laughter. 

"Seriously? Oh God, that's so sweet. I'm gonna Skype him and tell him I love him."

"You might wait 'til tomorrow," Bev says. "It's like, three in the morning in Berlin right now."

"I thought he was in Belgium," Richie says. 

"No, that was last week," Bev says, and then the oven beeps. "I was serious about Fashion Week. It might take some of the heat off Eddie, you know, if they started talking about you and me instead. I can tell the tabloid stuff bothers him. More than it bothers me, anyway."

Bev was always sensitive about that kind of thing, back in high school. Everyone in Derry had thought she was sleeping with all of them - separately, one at a time, for money, what have you - but as they'd gotten older, and a little wilder, she'd started to lean into the rumors, absorbing the blows into her chest and using them to get angry. Richie remembers being really proud of her for that. Still, maybe it's different now. Richie feels like he knows her better than anyone else in the world, at the same time that he's sort of keenly aware that they didn't remember each other for twenty-seven years. "It's not causing problems for him with the divorce, is it?"

"No, that stuff is mostly done," Bev says. "Just technicalities left, I think. Myra is actually being pretty decent about it. He must have convinced her somehow to ease up. She's already resigned from the production company, and sold most of her shares and everything. Got a job over at ABC Family, I think."

Richie takes the frittata out of the oven carefully, half-listening. "Sure. That's good."

"He said you've been a bit dodgy lately. On the phone." Bev's voice is cautious. "Is everything, you know, okay? With the two of you?"

"I'm not dodgy," Richie says. "I'm just busy. I have, you know, lots of documents, and meetings, and things to read. I'm a very well-known figure in the world of musical internet criticism."

"Uh huh," Bev says. 

"It's just," Richie says, leaning hard against the counter. He shuts the oven off with a frustrated jab of his finger. "It's weird to talk to him. I feel weird. I'm not happy about it, Bev, like - I'm fucking trying."

"Okay," Bev says patiently. "Why is it weird?"

That's the thing. Richie doesn't know. His memories of Eddie are the strongest, stronger even than his memories of Bev, who had been his actual, for-real girlfriend for a while there, in the halcyon days of twelfth grade. Eighteen-year-old Richie hadn't been any more comfortable with his sexuality than forty-one-year-old Richie is, but he had loved her, and he'd _wanted_ to want her. He remembers that. 

But Eddie - God, Eddie. He remembered Eddie right away. Remembered his skinny little knees, always stained with grass, his angry voice, the little hand gestures that used to drive them all crazy. (Mike, in particular, had had a _killer_ Eddie impression that never failed to send them all into hysterics.) They went everywhere together, did everything as a paired set. The day Eddie moved away was one of the worst of Richie's life, although he still isn't sure if it was because it was Eddie specifically who was leaving, or because some part of Richie knew that it was only a matter of time before the rest of them would be taken away, and he would be alone again. 

Sandy used to make fun of him for his obsession with Dr. K. It was cute, Richie figured, in the way quirks about people were cute. Ranveer had a giant, planet-sized crush on Liv Tyler, which meant there was always a Lord of the Rings wall calendar in their studio somewhere, no matter how many times Richie offered bribes to buy _literally_ anything else. His old boss at KPCC would go on long rants about the correct way to make homemade ranch dressing. Mike was so particular about texting etiquette he actually got genuinely mad at everyone once for ignoring each other's messages in the group chat for too long. And Richie had a weird obsession with a hack TV doctor. So like, that was cute, right?

Maybe. Richie feels weird talking to Eddie sometimes because out of nowhere, when Eddie is complaining about his divorce, or fretting about the future of his career, Richie will have the sudden and powerful urge to hug him. To just sit up, walk straight out his door, drive to Eddie's in-between hotel room and wrap his arms around him. So that's weird. Richie isn't so repressed not to realize that there might be feelings of some sort involved in this impulse - romantic, sexual, et cetera - but the concept makes him feel panicky and short of breath, sort of like how he felt in Derry when a gigantic personification of homophobia was chasing him down the street with an axe. So he hasn't really examined it too closely, yet. 

"Is it weird with Ben?" he asks, because he's sort of a dick sometimes. Bev hums curiously, because she's a graceful person, whom Richie sometimes does not deserve. "Like, you've been talking to him, one on one, right?"

"I mean," Bev says hesitantly, "yes. He - " she stops, like she was about to tell a secret, and remembered herself. But all she does is clear her throat, and keep going. "I think I overwhelmed him. When I told him how I felt."

"Impossible." Richie leans his elbows against the counter, getting closer to the phone. As if he can comfort her better when his voice is louder, or something. "Who wouldn't want to be loved by Beverly Marsh? It's an exhilarating experience. I imprinted on you at age seventeen like a baby chicken, and every relationship since has been a pale shadow of ours, my love."

Bev laughs, watery and thin. "Now I know that's not true."

"No, it is," Richie says, and means it, a little. 

"He's got so much going on right now. I think it - like, it flattered him? And he said he has feelings for me too, but I know they're not - it's not like he was pining away for me too, all those years." Bev sounds frustrated, and a little embarrassed, like she always does when she talks about Ben. "And who could blame him. I was the one who imprinted, Richie. The first boy who was nice to me, and I couldn't get him out of my head for the rest of my damn life."

"That's not true either," Richie says. "Because Stan was nicer to you way before any of us met Ben."

Bev sniffles loudly, and then laughs. It's still hard to talk about Stan. Richie feels a little bad for bringing him up all the time, but there's no other way to get past it, to keep Stan with them, even in this small way. He doesn't want to forget again. 

"I guess I'm just nervous," Bev says. "Nervous that he's flattered more because I'm famous, because I'm a model, because he saw my spread in Sports Illustrated and thinks I'm hot. Like - whatever, right? It's not exactly a bad thing. But for it to be so unequal - me with all this shit from back then, all this baggage about him I've been carrying around, putting him on a pedestal - and then, what, we're supposed to just date? Like, just go on dates, like we're normal people?"

"Is there a better option?" Richie asks. "I mean, shit, Bev. There's only one place to start. There's a middle ground between being strangers and being fucking married."

Bev sighs noisily. "Sure," she says. "Yeah. Okay."

"He does have a lot going on. Trying to get away from Cruella de Vil," Richie says. "Is it - like, I wouldn't ever say this to him, but - you've noticed, right? That his business partner looks exactly like - "

"His mother?" Bev finishes, with a bitter laugh. "Yeah. Trust me, Ben's noticed too."

"Well, that's depressing."

"No shit," Bev says. "Listen, can you call Eddie more? Like, talk to him like you talk to me. I think it'll help both of you."

Richie leans his forehead against the counter, his heart beating fast in his chest for no reason that he wants to look at too closely, at the current moment. 

"I'm serious, Richie," she says. "He's hurting too. We're all in a weird place right now, but you know Eddie. He doesn't handle change very well, and he's changing literally _everything_ in his life right now. And he wants to talk to you about it, but you won't sit still long enough for him to do it."

"Okay, okay," Richie says. "I wasn't trying to hurt his feelings or anything."

"No, I know you weren't."

"I'll call him," Richie says. "I was supposed to anyway, this morning. Shit."

"Tell him," Bev urges. "About you know what. It'll make you feel better, Richie." His stomach drops. "I mean it. You can tell me, but that's not so scary, is it? Because you knew how I'd react already."

That's...well, okay, that's true. Richie feels weirdly exposed, by her cutthroat examination, there. 

"And I'm not saying Eddie will react badly, I don't think he will," Bev continues. "But it's different, isn't it? I think you know why."

Richie rubs his face. "My food's getting cold, Bev."

"Alright, alright. Tell Mike I love him. And that I said hi."

"Okay."

"And that you're a big pussy," Bev adds, and Richie guffaws. "Which I mean in an affectionate way. Pussy."

"Fuck you," Richie says, and hangs up in the middle of her laugh. His fucking frittata has probably gotten cold in the middle. Motherfucker. 

Mike wanders in, suspiciously timed, raising his eyebrows at Richie, who is still draped over the counter like a light-headed Victorian maiden. "Did you make food?"

"Were you eavesdropping?" Richie counters, smashing the words against the counter. Mike makes an innocent face, shrugging expansively and rolling his eyes towards the ceiling. Richie sighs. "Yes."

"Bacon again?" Mike says, wandering over. "You always make it extra greasy, somehow. No idea how. Like a special talent you have."

"I have very few of those," Richie says, "but the ones I do have, have served me well. Frittatas. Podcasting. Eating pussy."

Mike grimaces. "Charming."

"Like you're not good at it too," Richie says, hearing it come out as an accusation. He's certain he's right, though. Mike's the sort of guy to go down on a woman for hours, and then shrug it off when she offers to reciprocate. He probably gave all of his wives dozens and dozens and dozens of orgasms which only made them all feel guiltier about how much they sucked at loving Mike back. Richie is depressing himself, now. "There's oregano in the fridge. To put on top."

"Fancy," Mike says. He pulls out a block of cheese, and a bunch of parsley, instead of oregano. It's possible he doesn't know the difference. "Rich."

"Yeah, Mikey."

Mike leans in close, setting the ingredients down on the counter so he can jostle Richie's arm affectionately. "Bev loves me." He laughed as Richie shoved him away. "Heard that part."

"Get away from me," Richie says. "Eat your fucking baked eggs. Worked hard on them."

"I know," Mike says, patting his shoulder. His way of saying thanks, Richie figures. 

At Bill's sad, studio apartment in Derry (above the town's singular bar, within walking distance of the high school where he thanklessly taught writing composition to a generation of Derry's best and brightest) he had stacks of magazines that Bev had been photographed for, which was sweet in a creepy way. Sort of Bill's niche, really. 

("I don't even remember this one!" Bev exclaimed, picking up an issue of Teen Vogue from 2001. "Am I wearing a _poncho?_ ")

They'd all done a shitty job of hiding how creeped out they were by it, probably, but most especially Ben, who got all riled up about the Victoria's Secret catalogues near the back, as if it were Bill's fault that Bev had spent five years making gobs of money in Europe for showing off how good she looked in a longline bra set. At least it wasn't _only_ Bev - that would've definitely been creepy - he had every copy of all of Mike's true crime books, even the fucked up one about the murder case in Alaska that was so grody nobody wanted to actually read it - and tapes of Richie's radio shows, going all the way back to the late 90s. And the Dr. K merch - hoo boy. And Richie thought _he'd_ been obsessed. 

"Bill, I just want you to know, from the bottom of my heart," Eddie had said, crossing his arms in front of his own image, on a _Eat Clean and Stay Lean!_ poster promoting his O Network hour-long special in 2010, "fuck you. I love you, I appreciate you, but - " Eddie gestured angrily at his own cheerful face on the poster, photoshopped to mythological levels of flawlessness - "go fuck yourself."

"You just had a lot of helpful advice, Eds," Bill said, raising his voice over Ben and Mike's snickering. Stan, thankful to have escaped the serial killer cataloguing by virtue of being an unfamous nobody, just shook his head. "I especially appreciated your tips on how to lose weight by meditating about it."

"I deserve that," Eddie said, over their growing laughter, "but you guys should still fuck yourselves. Consider that a formal recommendation from Dr. K."

("He's not a real doctor," Richie stage-whispered, and Eddie threw one of Mike's paperbacks at his head.)

Deep down in his shameful, secretly sappy heart, Richie thought it was touching. That Bill had kept track of them all those years so faithfully, had watched their contributions (approved by the medical community or not) to society with love and care. That there hadn't been any trace of his parents, or Georgie, in Bill's apartment had been rather telling. But Richie supposed he had enough reminders everywhere else in that fucking town. 

"I think I want a balcony," Eddie says, here in the present. "Or do I? What do you think? Do I want a balcony?"

Richie's on the deck again, smoking a blunt and talking to Eddie. Most of his day-to-day now consists of those two activities, in varying orders: weed, and phone calls. It's not a _bad_ life. "What are your plans for a balcony? Actually - what do people do on balconies? I've only lived in one place that had one, and it was in my roommate's bedroom so I hardly ever went out there."

"They smoke," Eddie says, "which I don't, so that's one con. They...hang out? Grow plants? What the fuck. I don't know. But I want one."

"Have sex," Richie suggests, and Eddie makes a hilarious sound. "What - not into exhibition?"

"No," Eddie says firmly. "I did have a balcony once, in college. I lived on the eighteenth floor. My roommate used to fuck his girlfriend out there, it was disgusting."

Richie cackles at the mental image of twenty-year-old Eddie, scolding some frat boy business major on hygienic sex. "Hot."

"Not hot! Up against the railing - I saw them once! Nearly had a heart attack," Eddie says, raising his voice to be heard over Richie's laughter. "Shut up. Eighteen stories up, Rich. Is any orgasm worth it? You'd be dead. Like, extra super dead. Brain soup on the pavement."

All of the potential replies simmering to the top of _Richie's_ brain soup at the moment involve orgasms, which is a bad idea on several levels. He flounders for a second, lost for words like he often is around Eddie these days. "Did you meet Myra in college?" He winces, but he does really want to know. "No, wait, you told me you've only been together for five years."

"I met her in med school," Eddie says. He's so open about his life, about answering Richie's questions, which feels like a gift. "We didn't start dating until much later, obviously. But yeah, technically, I guess I met her in college."

"Oh my God," Richie says, "is _Myra_ a real doctor?"

"No," Eddie replies sourly, "she's a nurse practitioner. But she let her license lapse like eight years ago."

Richie sputters with laughter, fumbling the blunt back into the ashtray so he doesn't drop it. 

"I didn't even finish," Eddie says. "Obviously." 

"Oh no way," Richie says, "that's what my mom said about her date with you last week. Seems to be a pattern of yours."

Eddie sighs noisily into the phone. "Your mother has better taste."

"Don't talk about my mom, man," Richie says, and takes another hit. His voice is strained as he holds the smoke inside his lungs, which he obviously does so Eddie will notice. "She'd be insulted that you think she has any standards."

"Are you _smoking?_ " Eddie says, in outlandish outrage. Richie grins. "You've got to be _kidding_ me."

"Eddie, baby, relax. It's just pot."

"So? Pot smoke is still smoke, numbnuts. What, you can't do edibles like a fucking grown up?" Eddie demands, and Richie dissolves again into laughter. "Jesus. Make some weed brownies like everyone else. You're impossible."

It occurs to Richie, in this moment, grinning up at the blue Arizona sky with a deep, endless well of fondness in his chest, that he'd been doing the same thing Bill had, but only with Eddie. Stalking him from afar. Did it count as stalking, when Eddie's face had been plastered all over daytime television for the last decade and a half? Did it count if Richie himself had had no idea why he was so into this yappy little fake doctor dude with bad advice?

He hadn't collected back issues of Bev's photoshoots, and he'd never even glanced at a Mike Hanlon bestseller, to tell the truth. Ben designed houses for billionaires and celebrities, of which Richie was neither, so it's not like he'd had any reason to pay attention to him. And Stan…

"Man," Richie says, feeling the drug settling down around him in a soft haze. His head feels malleable, sort of like it has holes in it. Just a buncha little holes, like a memory-foam pillow. "I miss Stan."

Eddie makes a sad, surprised noise. "Oh. Yeah, Rich. I do too."

Stan taught economics at a state university in Georgia. Richie had looked up his name on the website on his phone, Bev and Eddie leaning over both shoulders, and they read snippets of it out loud to Mike, Ben, and Bill, crowded morosely around the stairs at the Townhouse the night before they all left. A pathetic wake really, much less than Stan deserved, but it was all they could manage at the time. _Macroeconomics, cognitive economics, and the economics of risk and time - the fuck does that mean? Risk and time?_ There hadn't been much information at all, and nothing personal, certainly. He went to Florida State for undergrad, and the University of North Carolina for his MA and PhD. His office hours had been 10 AM to 1 PM every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, or otherwise by appointment. His picture was a tightly-cropped shot of his face, squinting into the sun uncomfortably, his glasses on top of his head for some reason. His current research interests were risk aversion measurement, social choice mechanisms, and the economics of happiness, whatever the everliving fuck _that_ all meant. 

"He said something to me," Richie says. "Right before."

"Fuck," Eddie replies. A heavy pause. "What was it?"

"He was telling me I had to go, that we had to get everyone out, and - " Richie squeezes his eyes shut. He has to be high to think about this, but even when he is, it still feels like walking on hot coals. "He told me to be proud."

Eddie doesn't say anything for a minute. Richie closes his eyes and pictures him in his stupid-rich divorced-man hotel room in LA, sitting on a balcony, a cup of coffee at his elbow. Starched shirt already laid out on the bed. Ready to face the day. Is it morning, actually? Or afternoon? Richie's not sure. "That's it? He just said, 'be proud.'"

"He actually said 'be proud of yourself,'" Richie says, gritting his teeth against the memory. He's been having this recurring nightmare of Stan saying _I hope you're proud of yourself_ instead, in an angry, accusing tone, and then his head usually falls off his neck and turns into a spider monster and eats Richie's legs, so even saying the words out loud has teeth. But Stan would never, could have never. That's a nightmare, not the truth, and the truth was: he'd touched Richie's arm and said, 'be proud of yourself,' and then pushed him away, into Ben's waiting grip, and said, 'go on. I love you.' And that was it. That was the end. 

"That's," Eddie says, and then trails off. Richie's gut twists. "Jesus."

"Do you know who his wife was?" Richie asks idly, staring up at the lone cloud in the sky, wispy and almost not-there, drifting slowly towards the mountains. "Or his girlfriend. Whatever."

"They weren't married, just dating," Eddie says hesitantly. He sounds upset, a little wobbly, like he had in Derry, when he was fighting with Ben. "He talked about her to me, a little."

"Look at you. Mr. Special."

"Shut up," Eddie says, without heat. "It was a woman at his university. A PhD student, he said. They were trying to be discreet until she graduated."

"Scandalous," Richie says, without much enthusiasm. 

"He said she was only three years younger than him. Maybe she took time off of school. Or something. I dunno. PhDs take a long time."

Richie chews on his bottom lip and thinks about her, whoever she is, grieving by herself in student housing somewhere in Georgia. Fucking depressing. Mike should've given _her_ an open invitation to his fancy guest room, instead of Richie. "She probably doesn't want to hear from us."

"Bill talked to her on the phone, I think. You could ask him for her email address if you want."

Richie would literally jump off the side of this deck, before he would do that. "Sure."

Eddie huffs, like he knows the direction Richie's thoughts are quickly spiraling towards. "Rich."

"Yeah," Richie says, lazily. His thoughts are drifting like that cloud. His thoughts _are_ the cloud, maybe. Whoa - that's fuckin' deep. 

"How high are you right now?"

Richie laughs in response, curling his knees up on the deck chair. It's ancient, practically vintage, with those cracking, spongy tubes of plastic that would pinch your fingers if you tried to fuck around with it. Richie's getting all sorts of sense memories on this thing from the early 90s. That time he got his hair caught in the hinge of one, at a pool party in North Hollywood Hills, some executive's house. (Embarrassing.) Blowing some frat boy on the deck of a house in New Hampshire, on vacation with his parents. (Even more embarrassing.) Lying upside down, his cheeks pressed to the scorching hot, purple plastic, in Stan's backyard as they waited for Mrs. Uris to refill the pool. (Wait, that last one was the 80s.) "High enough, my man."

Eddie sighs again, and when he speaks again, he sounds kind of mad. "You know, I'm trying hard not to take this personally," he says, "but it's getting hard not to take this personally."

"Whuh?" Richie says, intelligently. 

"Is it me?" Eddie asks, a little plaintive. Something twists hard, deep in Richie's chest. "You can't talk to me for more than five minutes unless you're drunk or stoned off your ass. Like, are you mad at me for something? I wish you'd just tell me, if that's the case."

"I'm not mad," Richie says blankly, frowning as he struggles to put the pieces of this conversation back together. "What?"

"Just," Eddie says, sounding frustrated, "call me back. Okay? Take a nap or something. Christ."

"Eds," Richie whines, feeling like he's fucked up somehow but not really understanding how. "Come on, I'm not - what are you talking about?"

"Call me back," Eddie repeats, firmly, and then Richie's holding a phone of dead air to his cheek. A little whiplashed, Richie pulls it away from his face and looks at it, his lock screen lighting up when he clicks the side button clumsily. There's sunscreen from Richie's face smeared all over the screen. Frustrated, sweaty, and confused, Richie lets the phone fall to the deck, and it lands with a loud clatter. 

"Bangarang!" he yells, for no good reason. It echoes in the yard, bouncing off the trees. Still frustrated, still sweaty, and still confused, Richie huffs and lays his arm across his eyes to block out the sun. That didn't help at all. 

Maybe he should lay off the weed. Well, he's running out anyway. Is it even legal in Arizona? He should ask Mike. 

Mike's last book was turned into a documentary series on TruTV narrated by the guy who played Riker on Star Trek, and produced by the guy who _directed_ Star Trek. The movies, not the TV shows. Richie had been secretly very impressed. 

"It's all just, my God. It's bullshit," Mike said, the night Richie dragged his sorry ass up his long, rich person driveway, two days after his divorce and not even a full week after Mike's public breakdown live on Twitter, in which he confessed to everything from profiting off of the pain of murder victims to sensationalizing the very real, very serious problem of factory farming. It was a little painful to read, Richie's not gonna lie. Definitely some oversharing. Apologizing for things he really didn't need to. Mike still swears he wasn't drunk, but they all have doubts. 

"Your career?" Richie guessed. "Your most recent divorce? Gimme a clue, here."

Mike squinted at him, and then held his beer bottle up to the lamp on the table, twisting it until it made weird shapes on the wall. "All of the above," he said. He deflated a little, visibly. "I have so much fucking money, Richie. But it doesn't feel like it's really mine. Do you ever think that we - when we left - this was what we got? Dreams come true, in the worst possible ways?" Mike shook his head. "I wanted to write fiction, you know."

"So why didn't you?" Richie asked, plucking the bottle out of Mike's hand. It always freaked Richie out when Mike got like this - introspective and vague, like an old wizard on a bad TV show. 

"My agent didn't think it would sell. My first manuscript, the one she signed me on, was based on the Rodney Alcala case. So she had me turn it into a true crime book, since I'd already done all the research, and...well." Mike shrugged. 

"You could write fiction now," Richie pointed out. He was often doing this for the Losers - redirecting their attention to their very real, very successful careers, that would probably survive their respective changes of heart much better than any of them thought. He was overdue for a professional crisis himself, Richie figured. But then again - he had one of those every five years or so, like clockwork. Nothing out of the ordinary, really. How the fuck else does someone end up doing podcasts for a living? "You have an agent, you have a publisher. You have fans, you have thirty thousand Twitter followers. Write a story, man. Write about Derry, if you want."

"I don't think I can," Mike said morosely. 

"Bullshit you can't. Of course you can. You've written a stupid number of books, Mikey."

Mike made a face. "Don't call me that."

Richie sighed. He'd forgotten Mike's absolute hatred of that nickname. "Sorry."

To his credit, he shrugged it off now a lot easier than he had when they were kids. "There's a Guy de Maupassant quote - he was the father of the modern short story, you know - about emptiness. How does it go?" Mike leaned his head back against the wall and frowned. "'I imagined man without ears.' Then something, something about sound… 'afraid of the air, afraid of the night. From the moment we can know almost nothing, and from the moment that everything is limitless, what remains? Does emptiness actually not exist?'"

Richie stared at him, appalled. Was he fucking kidding? "Did you just quote that shit from memory? Mike." Mike blinked at him, startled. "You are such a fucking nerd. I don't even know what to say to you right now."

Mike laughed. "I was trying to say that I have writer's block." He frowned. They'd been a little drunk, at that point. "I think."

"Was the guy de mop or whoever - was he a nihilist?" Richie grinned. "I know what that word means. You can quiz me."

"Guy de Maupassant. And, I don't know," Mike said. "A lot of people think he was. I think he was just interested in sadness. Literarily speaking."

"Hm." Richie hadn't read any of Mike's books, but he had a strong feeling that they would also be interested in sadness. "Are you empty? Is that what you're trying to tell me? You can't write what you wanna fuckin' write because you have no ears and the world is a black void?"

Mike laughed again. "Maybe. Maybe the void is a metaphor."

"Enough with the metaphors for trauma. Once they come to life and chase you down the street you stop appreciating the fucking literary merit."

"Amen," Mike said, kicking Richie's shin gently with his boot. "Maybe I don't have any stories left. I could never come up with any good ones. That's why I stuck to true crime. Hacky bullshit." He scoffed, agitated again. 

"So write something else. Poetry." Richie shrugged. "Haikus. Restaurant menus. I don't know, Mike, the clown is dead, and we remember everything now. The world's not a void - it's just the world. All you gotta do is choose a direction, and start fucking walking."

Mike studied him for a minute, a bemused half-smile on his face. "You know," he said, "I'm surprised you never had a talk show."

"Hello, this is Richie Tozier," Richie said, in his best Frasier Crane, "and I'm listening."

Mike threw him a pity laugh. "I'm serious. The podcast is fine, I guess, but you don't even talk that much on it. You ask interview questions, but that's it."

"My best bit of feedback yet," Richie said, "'fine, I guess.'"

"I mean it. The podcast is good, Richie, but it's information-based. Interviews, and features from other people. Your name isn't even on the description."

Richie hunched his shoulders, and attempted not to feel defensive. 

"I couldn't believe it, when I first listened to it. When you first said that, at the Jade, I thought, 'oh of _course_ he talks for a living.' You're made for it. But that's what I mean - there's no _you_ in it." He sighed. "Just like Bev said, when she was telling us that story about her first modeling job. It felt like she was signing herself away."

"Morbid," Richie said listlessly. 

"True," Mike said. "We all got everything we wanted. But it was empty." He looked Richie over, head to toe, which was something he used to do a lot when they were kids. Assessing, like he was checking them over for injuries. Richie used to get so uncomfortable beneath Mike's calm, measured gaze. It used to remind him of his father - the way Went would grab Richie's chin and hold it still while he looked Richie over, checking for any differences or alterations since the last time they'd seen each other. _Inspecting the merchandise,_ Richie used to think of it. Mike's intent was always much warmer - he wanted to make sure everyone was safe, all the time - but the discomfort was ingrained, hard to shake loose. "What did you _want_ to do, Rich?"

Richie's first impulse was to say, _I didn't want anything,_ because that was true. It felt a little too real for the moment, though, despite everything. "I don't know," he said, "and that's not a cop out, believe it or not. I was like one of those LA moms who blitz out on pills while their life revolves around them. Ambien at night, Vicodin in the morning. Not literally, but." Richie rubbed his chin. "Sandy and I - we used to talk about that stuff. In the beginning. She was always more ambitious than me, but for a while there, I think we were actually really good for each other. We were talking about moving to New York, and I was gonna start working on writing. She thought I would be good at longform music journalism - you know, like essays. I had a roommate in college that ended up at Rolling Stone, he offered to pass my name on half a dozen times." Richie shrugged. "I thought that sounded okay. Kind of fun, even. But then we got married, and we bought our first condo, and." He shrugged again, helplessly. 

Mike squinted at him again, looking sympathetic. "Did either of you even want to get married?" he asked. Richie snorted. "Right. Got it."

"It wasn't like," Richie said, struggling for words, "like Myra and Eds. It wasn't like that. It was more like...we didn't have any better ideas. Like, we'd been together long enough. What else were we supposed to do?"

If anything, that made Mike look even more depressed than before. "Good for you then," he said, "on the divorce. Best decision you could've made, huh?"

"I really think so," Richie said honestly. 

It's weird that it's not weird - living with Mike. He's working on a manuscript he won't talk about, which Richie hopes means that it's a fiction one, like they'd talked about that first night. But either way - Richie doesn't see him much, during the day. He has this wildly rigid schedule - gets up at 6 AM on the dot, every morning, without fail - and actually sets _alarms_ for breaks and meals, like he's his own middle management boss. (It's very cute.) So Richie can choose when and if he even wants to see the guy, and Mike seems happy enough to let Richie lounge around in a disgusting manner on all the nice surfaces in his house, so overall it kind of really works. 

He's restless. He knows he is, it's not like he can't tell. Mike was right about the podcast, but that's what makes them so popular - all the good press they get goes on and on about how informative and interesting and thoughtful it is (one blogger even called it _academic_ once, which made Ranveer spit out his coffee) and since it makes them a lot of money, neither of them have made any serious moves towards expanding. Richie's been thinking about it a lot - changing direction. What he would do, what he _wants_ to do. He doesn't feel any closer to an answer than he had before Derry, when he was still living as a half-made person, weakly moving through life with dark sunglasses on. 

Late at night, when Richie can't sleep, he will sometimes text Sandy, who is always willing to go back and forth with him for a while in a way that they never really did when they were together. It occurs to him that he's missed her, this version of Sandy that he knew before marriage locked them into separate bedrooms. His _friend_ , Sandy. Sandy, who knows the minutiae of his life in a way the Losers don't. At least not yet. 

_did you ever really mean it when you said I was funny enough to start my own shit,_ Richie sends, six hours after Eddie hung up on him. He's definitely sober now, but the confusion and sweatiness hasn't really faded. 

_Yes._ She always puts a period at the end of her sentence when she really means something, it's pretty cute. _Do you have an idea?_

Maybe. Richie thinks about Mike, rattling back and forth upstairs, talking to himself. Richie caught him once, and Mike was so embarrassed he avoided Richie for days, but it actually makes sense - reading the stuff out loud, practicing dialogue, working through the shit verbally before you put it down on paper. He's been thinking about that a lot, lately, and about how popular fictional podcasts are. About his Voices, which are still pretty good. About his buddy in Portland who composes music for commercials, and has been bitching for years about how he wants to get more creative work. 

_send me a picture of ur dog again,_ he says instead. _i think it'll help my depression. 2 or 3 more pics and i'm cured_

_His name is PRINCE ROGERS NELSON and you must ask nicely_

_fine may i pls see the dog formerly known as prince, the high priest of pop? o purple one, wherefore art thou?_

Sandy immediately and kindly responds with a picture of Prince Rogers Nelson, who is a bulldog with adorable, pointy ears and a purple knitted dog-poncho that Sandy swears he picked out himself at PetSmart. He's chewing on a gigantic bone and slobbering all over Sandy's couch much like Richie used to, so in that sense, he really has been replaced. Richie grins and saves it to his phone. 

_beaut. i can see the sky again. my sinuses are clear, my future is bright. love u both,_ Richie sends. Sandy sends back a smiley face and a heart. Purple, of course. 

Richie texts a lot, and he posts on Twitter a lot. He's a poster. It's chronic. Only Bill is more active, and that's possibly because he spent thirty years by himself in a horror mindfuck nightmare town. So he has a much better excuse. 

Eddie's the only who responds to every single message, which is either a byproduct of his anxious personality or a goofy polite thing he does for professionalism, or whatever. So when he _stops_ responding, that's when Richie knows he's really mad. 

"I really don't know what I did," Richie whines, to the following people, in order, for the following reasons: Mike (proximity), Bev (frequent caller), Bill (unfortunate timing on his part to Skype in right when Richie and Mike were talking about it), and Ben (Richie felt guilty for leaving him out). 

The responses vary, everything from "huh?" (Bill) to "did you ask him?" (Mike) to "you know what you fucking did, I told you not to do this didn't I, I told you he was feeling fragile and you went and made it worse you fucking numbnut" (Bev). Ben's advice is the most noteworthy, in Richie's expert opinion: he tells Richie to send Eddie flowers.

"I mean," Ben stammers, backtracking once he says the words out loud and realizes how they sound, "like...bro flowers?"

Bro flowers, Richie thinks. Fucking adorable. "No, no, you're onto something here, Benjy," Richie says. "I could send him an apology gift. Not flowers, Eddie hates flowers. He thinks he's allergic."

"Tons of people are allergic to flower pollen, that's not like, super paranoid or anything," Ben points out. 

Richie thinks of countless summer days in the late 80s and early 90s, when Eddie would barrel through Mike's cornfield face first, or go digging around in Richie's mom's garden for hours, pulling out weeds (and a few actual flowers) by the handful without so much as a sniffle, and scoffs. "But he's not."

"Okay." Ben sounds like he's smiling. "Maybe some scotch or something?"

"Chocolate?"

"There's no way he eats chocolate," Ben says.

"Vegan chocolate. Healthy chocolate," Richie says. "They make like, probiotic chocolate, don't they?"

"Gross," Ben says, and Richie starts to laugh just as Mike skids into the room, holding his phone out in front of him in one hand. "Isn't 'probiotic' just a Whole Foods word for 'laxative' - "

"Richie, holy shit," Mike says, and Richie blinks at him in surprise. "Have you looked at Twitter today?"

"I don't spend _that_ much time on Twitter, Mike! Fuck you - "

"Is that Mike?" Ben says. 

"Look at Twitter!" Mike glances at Richie's phone, still held up to his ear. "Oh wait - is that Eds? Are you in the middle of an apology?"

" _Fuck_ you," Richie says again, and then to Ben, "man, hold on, Mike's being a little bitch."

"Fuck you," says Mike. 

"Did he say something about Twitter?" Ben says. 

"Man, it's Stan's girl," Mike says. Richie feels himself go light-headed, his grip going loose on the phone. "Put Ben on speaker. I've got it right here."

Open on Mike's phone is the Twitter profile of an actress who looks vaguely familiar to Richie, in a "goddamn if I haven't met her at a terrible LA party" sort of way. Her name is Patty Brandeis, her profile picture is a photo of a blueberry muffin, and her bio says _actress, teacher, and lover of grilled cheese sandwiches._

"This is Stan's girl?" Richie asks. The pinned tweet seems to be some sort of announcement - never good news when a famous person pulls out a screenshot of the Notes app - and Richie's stomach sinks as Mike hands him the phone, and he starts to read. _Devastated to announce… I've always valued my privacy and so we didn't make any announcements when we became engaged… nothing will ever replace him in my life, it's hard to even believe that it's real… I so deeply regret that the public nature of my life has brought this sort of attention onto a grieving family… please respect his memory and leave his parents in peace._ "Jesus. Oh, fuck, Mike. Jesus."

"I guess some of her fans figured out that she was engaged to someone and so, when the Urises ran an obituary for Stan, they started harassing her about it," Mike says somberly. His face is ashen, and Ben is very quiet on the speakerphone - Richie wonders if he'd muted the speaker. He did that sometimes. "Maybe they were doing it to the Urises too. At least that's what she seems to be implying here - I know Bill talked to both of them, both Patty and Rabbi Uris. I don't know what he told them, though, I'm not sure what - "

"If he told them how he died, you mean," Richie says, his voice feeling very far away. Quietly, Ben says, _Rich,_ and nothing else, and Richie takes a deep breath. "Sorry. I didn't mean that to sound - "

"It's okay," Mike says quickly. 

"Did you know she was famous?" Ben asks. "She's - oh fuck, you guys. She was on that sitcom! The one about scientists."

"I thought she was one of his students!" Richie says, with rising hysteria. "Eddie said she was a PhD student at his school, like why the fuck would an actress be getting a PhD?"

"Brian May has one," Mike says. He takes the phone back, tabbing over to an open internet browser. The Wikipedia page for Patty Brandeis is already open. "James Franco. The guy from Offspring - "

" _Brian May_?" Richie says incredulously. 

"Yeah, he's an astrophysicist," Ben says. He sounds distracted, sort of harried, like he often does when he's scared. It reminds Richie unpleasantly of a few different moments back in Derry. " _Damn,_ she was on _3rd Rock from the Sun!_ "

"No way," Richie says, yanking his own phone over, minimizing the phone screen to start his own Googling. 

"A child actress. Stan was gonna marry a child actress with a PhD," Mike says, laughing incredulously. "Oh my God, I remember her. I remember her on that show! She played Tommy's girlfriend! She was funny."

Richie stares at the photos on Google Images with incredulity. Most of them are from red carpets or events - she's pretty, he notes absently. Curly brown hair, thick glasses that look remarkably similar to the coke-bottle pair Richie himself sported between the ages of five to fifteen. A cast photo from her million-dollar-an-episode sitcom has her front and center, leaning against the shoulder of a skinny, balding guy in a Green Lantern t-shirt, making a cheesy unimpressed face. Her Wikipedia says she's currently pursuing a PhD in neuroscience from Georgia State University, which is located in her hometown. 

"She's trending," Ben says sadly. "Everyone seems nice so far."

Richie glances over at Mike's shoulder. He's looking at her IMDB page. "This is surreal. Why didn't he say anything?"

"Can't imagine why he wouldn't have wanted to tell us he was dating someone with," Mike pauses to look, "over three million results on Google."

"Bev just texted," Ben says, just as Richie's phone buzzes with the same text: _HAVE YOU GUYS SEEN THIS???? STAN WAS MARRYING THE BAZINGA GIRL????_ "Bill's texting me too."

"What the fuck's a 'bazinga?'" Mike asks. 

"It's something she said during sex," Richie replies confidently. ("Beep beep, Richie," says Ben.) "No seriously, it's like a plotline on the show - "

"Oh my God, Bev found a picture of them," Ben interrupts. "He went with her to a party or something. Hold on, I'll forward it."

Richie doesn't want to look, but he also desperately wants to look. Mike makes the decision for him, swiveling his phone around and maximizing the blurry photo: Stan and Patty, sitting together at a dinner table, one of those round, too-clean, too-beautiful ones they have at weddings and events. Patty's wearing a flower in her hair, smiling so big her cheeks are bunched up beneath the rims of her glasses. Stan's smile is smaller - of course - but he has his hand on her shoulder. His tie is rumpled, like she'd been pulling on it. They both look so fucking happy. 

"I have to, uh," Richie says, his vision going spotty at the edges. "Mikey, I can't - "

Mike puts down his phone abruptly, looking alarmed. "Okay, Richie. Okay. Do you need - "

Richie's already gone, dashing into the kitchen and puking up his burger and fries from lunch, bile burning his nose, cold sweat at his temples. Like usual, it's there and it's gone, like a flash flood of nausea. He used to do this before he went on-air every night - just a one-two-three quick ralph in the bathroom, then good to go - Sandy was always after him to see a doctor about it but deep down Richie always knew it wouldn't help. It was just the way he processed emotion, or something. Through his gag reflex. 

He rinses his mouth with water and leans there against the counter for a second, listening to the distant murmur of Mike and Ben talking in the other room. The world sometimes feels too distant still, especially when he thinks about Stan, about the way he died, running across the cavern to pull Bill out of the Deadlights. Wrong place, wrong time, bad luck. It feels like a dream. It feels like something that shouldn't have been allowed to happen. 

Mike smiles at him kindly when he walks back in the room, reaching up with one hand to squeeze Richie's shoulder as he sits back down. "He's back," he says to Ben, still on speakerphone. "You good?"

"I'm here," Richie says instead. There's a different photo of Patty open on Richie's phone now, a still from her TV show. She's wearing a dress with a DNA pattern on it, grinning up at a skeptical-looking Neil deGrasse Tyson. "Do any of you even watch her show?"

"No," Mike says blankly. 

"I've seen clips on YouTube," Ben says. There's a pause. "Bev's being kind of mean about it."

Richie laughs in surprise. "It's not that bad. Just cheesy. We're not exactly the target audience."

Mike shakes his head, still looking a little shell shocked. "We should all watch it together."

"God," Ben says, "no wonder he was so secretive. You remember at dinner, we kept poking at him to give us details about his life? He acted like he worked for the CIA or something."

"I thought he was just scared," Richie says honestly. "And that's why he wasn't answering our questions." He'd thought, at the time, that they'd have plenty of time to wheedle the details out of him. The key with Stan had always been to keep wearing him down until he either blew up at you and threw something at your head, or gave in just to get you to shut up. Stan enjoyed the game as much as they did, which was the difference between "annoying" and "fun." At the Jade, Stan had been stoic, rigid with tension, laughing only half-heartedly along with everyone else, no matter how hard they all tried to draw him out. Richie closes his eyes briefly, thinking about the look on his face when Richie ran into him on Pine Street, walking back from getting his token from the old synagogue. It was the same exact look on his face when Rabbi Uris would scold him for something - stubborn, resentful, scared, and small. 

"He probably was," Ben says thickly. Mike leans his forehead against Richie's shoulder, sighing deeply. Richie fumbles with his hand, reaching up to grab Mike's forearm and squeeze. "Do you think that...he'd want us to tell her? I mean, about everything?"

Richie feels Mike stiffen. "What, like - _everything?_ " Richie asks, clumsily patting Mike's arm. " _Everything_ everything?"

"Yeah. The truth," Ben says. "I think that. I'd want that. If it'd been me."

Richie grimaces, looking down at Mike, who pulls away from Richie's shoulder with a similar expression of discomfort. Ben's only family, other than the Losers, is his business partner, a woman so controlling and emotionally manipulative that Bev has actually started secretly recording conversations whenever she's forced to interact with her, as a precaution should shit really hit the fan. When Ben showed up in Derry, he walked with his shoulders hunched, and he kept apologizing for things that didn't even make sense to be apologizing for. When the waitress brought Richie the wrong drink, for example, Ben quickly said, _oh I'm sorry! Here, have mine,_ as if it were _his_ fault somehow that the bartender mixed up the glasses with another table's. 

But that's Ben, and this is Stan. It's different, probably. They'd looked so in love, in that photo. 

"Maybe," Mike says, sparing Richie the pain of answering. "We'll talk about it." He pauses, looking over at Richie. "Has anyone heard from Eds? Do we know if he knows?"

"Richie, you should call him," Ben says quickly, confirming what Richie had already suspected, that they've literally all been talking shit about the situation behind Richie's back. Richie scowls at Mike, who looks away innocently. He might as well be whistling. "It'll be easier, coming from you."

"Right," Richie says dryly. "Because he finds my personality so soothing."

Mike doesn't say anything, and neither does Ben, a silence that feels loaded. Richie narrows his eyes at Mike, who looks away again, like a little kid on a sitcom trying to avoid his teacher's eye. 

"I mean," Ben says, "by comparison, I think he finds you the least annoying out of all of us. Realistically speaking."

"That's extremely untrue!" Richie says. "He loves all of us equally. He's just like, a deadbeat dad who sometimes forgets our birthdays, but you know, he tries his best. It's the thought that counts."

Mike laughs. "It's part of his charm," he says. "Also, he never forgets _your_ birthday. I think that's Ben's point."

"I'm the only one who's even had a birthday so far since we remembered each other, that's not a fair assessment," Richie says. He remembers suddenly that he's the oldest of all of them, a fact that had brought him great, profound joy as a middle schooler. "Because everyone's younger than me. Ha. You poor motherfuckers can't even tie your shoes without my sage advice and wisdom - " Mike interrupts him by covering his face with one big palm, pushing his head away roughly. Richie sputters with laughter. "Okay, ow."

"Jealous of our youth, as usual," Ben says, his laugh coming through thinly over the speaker. "Typical blow hard old man behavior. I bet he votes Republican."

"Oh, _fuck_ you," Richie says, pushing Mike's hand away. "Too far, Benjy. Also rich, coming from someone who once designed a house for John Kasich!"

"I donated the money he paid me to Planned Parenthood!"

Mike and Richie exchange a weary look. "Okay, Ben," Mike says, condescending in a kind way, a feat that only Mike Hanlon can truly pull off effectively. "Good for you. You're forgiven."

Ben sighs. "Just don't tell Bev, she's still kind of mad about the office building I did for The Heritage Foundation. I donated that money too! By the way."

"Okay, but that's worse. Do you see how that's worse, Ben?" Richie asks. "Also, she _definitely_ already knows. She did a deep Google dive on you like, twenty minutes after crossing the Derry city limits. She probably knows your social security number, dude."

"Yeah," Ben says resignedly, "good thing she's trustworthy, huh?"

Mike snorts. 

It's all well and good to be told that Eddie likes Richie a little bit more, cares about his opinion in a different way, but to actually process what that means in a practical way feels like he's trying to squeeze into a pair of jeans that don't fit. Richie isn't stupid, by any means - he was valedictorian twice, once in high school and then again in college, thank you very much - and he was always aware, at least on some level, of what he was doing to himself. He knew he wasn't attracted to Sandy, at least not in the way that a husband should be, but he married her anyway, thinking, _well she doesn't want me like that, either. There must be something wrong with both of us. Thank God we found each other in time._ He slept with plenty of men in his twenties, even had a weird boyfriend for a while in college (a deeply awkward film major named Sean, who liked to call Richie female names in bed - Richie shudders with embarrassment thinking about him now) but he'd always stopped short of the actual word, always held back from admitting what seems to obvious to him now - and what was probably obvious to other people all along, if Richie's being honest with himself. Sandy certainly hadn't blinked an eye, when he told her. 

_You're going to find someone you really love,_ she'd said, the last time they'd talked in person before she left for Colorado. _Someone you can't wait to see every day,_ and Richie said, _that person will probably be a man, babe,_ and Sandy just shrugged and said, _well, I figured._ Like it was just that easy! Like she wasn't even angry!

A better person than Richie, by far. Or a more honest one, maybe. Even now, Richie can feel himself inching closer to admitting it before he backs away again, thinking dismally of all those years he spent watching Dr. K's television specials and buying his stupid, bullshit diet books with a little tug in his chest the whole time, a long-buried but still burning spark that made him feel more alive than he ever felt with the people who were actually there in person, who actually shared his life. It wasn't like Bev - Bev, who _knew_ there was something she'd forgotten, a person that she loved that she couldn't remember. Bev hadn't dated anyone seriously, in all those years - never even got close. She's insecure about it now, will often call Richie for reassurance that she's doing things properly, not being weird or awkward with Ben, blowing her chance out of inexperience. She'd never let go of that feeling, had held onto it so tightly she couldn't bear to let it go, even when she didn't know what it was. Richie didn't do that - he just checked out. Closed his eyes, turned his face away, and let himself float. Moving through the motions of living, without actually _feeling_ it. 

Does that go away, once you realize? Richie doesn't know. He thinks sometimes that human brains are just patterns, a loosely-held collection of habits and instincts that viewed from the outside, seems like a cohesive personality. That's how he felt for a long time - just an animatronic Disney character on a theme park ride, waving and smiling over and over for the benefit of people he couldn't even see to give a shit about. _This has been Genre Anatomy with Ranveer Malhi and Richie Tozier! Like and subscribe! Keep us employed!_ Just talking, talking, talking, into a silent microphone, blabbing away to an audience he would never meet or see. Surely that leaves a mark. Surely that means he has to work at it, in order to be good at _real_ life. But breaking out of patterns, forcing himself to actually engage in every moment? Richie doesn't have the first clue where to even start. 

Eddie, by contrast, seems and feels so real that it's hard for Richie to handle, sometimes. If that's what Eddie's mad about - that Richie can't be genuine with him, that he has to be fucked up to bear Eddie's beautiful voice, well - Richie doesn't really know what to do about it. What he feels for Eddie, about Eddie, towards Eddie - it's all so much sometimes that he can't take it. His hands shake, his voice trembles. He gets tongue-tied and flustered. It's easier when he's high, because things seem less present, less close. He can lay there on the deck and listen to Eddie talk and it doesn't matter if he's grinning like an idiot, on the verge of tears just because Eddie is paying attention to him, because - he's stoned! So what! But to do that without a lifejacket? Richie doesn't know how he'd make it out unscathed. Maybe he wasn't built to be a genuine person. Maybe all he's good for is to reflect the good parts of himself back at his friends, to hold himself still and let them lean against him until they're strong enough to walk alone. To be held in _their_ regard, to be considered on his own merits, to be looked at and loved in return? To be loved by _Eddie?_ Richie wants it so much he doesn't think he wants it anymore. He wants it so bad he can't stand thinking about it. 

In an effort to make some progress, Richie Googles the following: _how to be honest, how to be in touch with feelings, how to process feelings, how to process gay feelings, how to emotionally support someone but also yourself at the same time, what does "withholding" mean?, emotionally withholding + repression?, closeted gay people + repression?,_ and _eddie dr. k politics lgbt issues opinions?_ which is a little transparent, but it's where he's at. The results are inconclusive, so he does what he usually does when this happens, and asks Sandy. 

_quick q,_ he texts, _how do you learn how to be honest with the people u love? I'm looking for an answer between 2 and 10 words only, thanks._

Sandy texts back: _1\. Open 2. Mouth 3. Say 4. Things 5. Idiot._ then, a few seconds later: _you good?_

She's not wrong. _good,_ he texts back. _what's 6-10?_

_6\. Believe 7. "ILY" 8. When 9. You 10. Hear It._

_That's 11 words babe_

_sorry my bad I don't know how to read,_ she replies, which makes him laugh so hard his hangover actually feels a bit better afterward. Like the joke itself somehow cleared Richie's sinuses and chased away the headache. _can I tell you something really heavy and intense honey_

 _Yes._ (Richie puts a period at the end, to convey his seriousness in that answer.)

_u know i've been going to therapy_

_Yes._

_well my counselor wanted me to tell you this in person, or over the phone, but i think texting works better for us now so hopefully that's not a mistake. Richie you don't have to reply to this if u don't want to, but u should know that I was thinking about suicide a lot when we met. And quite a few times after we got married. I always thought u knew but I felt so bad and guilty about it that I never told you, and I didn't really let you talk to me about it much anyway, which I'm really sorry about._

Richie lets out a long, measured breath, pressing the screen of his phone to his forehead. Yes, he knew. He didn't _know,_ but he knew.

_well not to make that even more intense but you're the reason i didn't. Sometimes when I was really low i would think "Richie would be so sad" and that would be enough to pull me back. And it's not anything you did, it's just that I loved you and I wanted you to be okay. So I know you feel guilty that you didn't help me enough but that's not how it works, that's not how it should work, and I feel bad that you feel bad about it. Like I just love you and that's all. You know what i mean_

Richie types her name out in the texting field: _Sandy,_ and then just stares at the keys for a long second, feeling frozen in place. As if there's anything he could say? As if anything would do justice to what he feels? In the end he just hits send on the unfinished sentence, _Sandy,_ and that's it. She reacts to it immediately with a heart.

 _I've been thinking about that a lot, and what it means to love people,_ she continues. _How sometimes loving means just being there, just living your life alongside someone else? Idk that we loved each other in a healthy way, or the "right" way, or w/e. But idk that it matters now either? So every time you feel like you're not doing enough, or that you can't figure out the words, just remember that you were enough for me! You were more than enough. The universe put us in the same place for a reason and I really believe that_

 _Sap,_ Richie responds, coming up with the response so suddenly that it feels like the first breath after breaking the surface of the water, like he was on pause, and someone hit the play button. She reacts to it with a heart, again. _sandy you saved my life too. i don't know where i would've ended up if i hadn't met you. it fucking breaks my heart that you might not know that._

 _thank you,_ she says, and Richie presses the phone to his face again, and just breathes for a second, thinking about it. About her bathtub, about the nightmares he used to have about finding her in there, face down in water that was tinted red from her blood. Maybe he knew enough to be afraid of it, or maybe that was IT. Maybe the nightmares Ben had over all those years of their deaths, the leftovers from his trip into the Deadlights back in '89, migrated into all of them, in the way that they used to know things about each other without being told. The thing Richie remembers most clearly about Derry, other than terror and pain, is relief. The relief of being right, of having his worst dreams confirmed as reality, of knowing that he had a _good reason_ to be scared of the things he was scared of.

Bill had said, _we're stronger when we're together. Our love for each other is what will get us through it,_ and Richie knows he was right, just as he knows that sometimes love isn't enough. It wasn't enough to save Stan, or to keep them together all these years. It wasn't enough for Richie and Sandy. So many times, over the years, Richie wished he could remake himself into the sort of man that _could_ want her, because he just loved her so goddamn much. He wanted to _be enough,_ ignorant of what that really meant, not understanding how cruel he was being to himself, in the process of trying to be good to other people. 

_can i tell you something heavy and intense now too,_ he sends. 

_Yes._

_i think i've been holding back with eddie because i'm afraid of hurting you,_ Richie types, and doesn't quite realize how true it is until it's there, in black and white. _and like same, it's not anything you did. But i've felt so guilty for not wanting you properly, for like not being a good husband, or at least the sort of husband that i thought you needed, and i think i'm punishing myself for that a little. Because i want to be closer to him but maybe i feel like i don't deserve to be._

Sandy doesn't reply for a second, but reacts with another heart, as a reassuring gesture, Richie figures. _honey I want you to be happy,_ she finally sends. _if it makes you feel better I'm sleeping with my neighbor?_

Richie buries his face in his pillow and laughs out loud. 

_listen,_ she texts, in a long message that the phone splits into two, _if we go down that road then we'll never stop. You feel guilty for not being straight, and I feel guilty for not being a man. You feel bad for not wanting me and I feel bad for not wanting you. There's no end and there's no point!! Like you said that day in the bathroom, it wasn't a waste and it wasn't nothing. You *were* a good husband Richie you took care of me and you loved me and that's what I needed, and you don't have to feel bad. You never lied, you never cheated. You never made me feel like I was trapping you or w/e. We gave each other everything we were capable of giving and then when the time came we let each other go and honestly who else can say that? That was some MATURE SHIT, honey. As beards go I think I definitely have one up on that woman elton john married to say the least_

Richie laughs again, typing through glasses that are fogging up a little from tears. _babe you blew her out of the water no contest_

 _Are we just like totally weird?_ she sends. _They should make a documentary about us. Tell your friend Mike to write a book._

 _nah, he wants to write fiction,_ Richie replies, feeling lighter than he has in weeks. _congrats on the neighbor. You good?_

 _Good._ Period for emphasis. Richie grins at the phone like an idiot. _It's not a forever thing but it's definitely a good for right now thing. Haven't told my parents yet, though_

 _Don't._ Richie grimaces. _just Do Not._

 _you're very smart,_ Sandy says. _You should start a podcast or something!_

 _now there's an idea,_ Richie replies.

Eddie and Sandy actually knew each other professionally, which was a mind trip to say the least. Sandy had spent weeks teasing Richie about his Dr. K obsession when they found out her radio station was going to have him on as a guest host when their star talk radio celebrity went on maternity leave, which was...about six years ago, if Richie's remembering correctly. He hadn't listened to the show - he actually doesn't have much patience for radio or podcasts, ironically, he always gets restless and ends up reading on his phone and then missing half of what they say - but Sandy did get him an autographed copy of Eddie's first book, which was Richie's favorite, and the only one that Eddie had written himself, Richie now knows. It was called _A Life Exacted,_ it came out before Eddie got his own TV show and transitioned into bullshittery, it was marketed as a memoir, and it is now definitely out of print. Richie's signed copy is probably like, a collectible or something. 

"Oh God, yeah, I remember her. She was so nice," Eddie said, when they made the connection, one of their last nights in Bangor before Eddie flew back to New York to leave his wife. His stories about Myra were harrowing - every Loser had probably Googled "financial abuse" at some point during the reunion dinner at the Jade, with varying degrees of subtlety - but Eddie just seemed so casual about it, so matter of fact. Yes, he was married, and no he did not want to be anymore. Derry - and in particular, Stan - seemed to give Eddie a sense of stony calm, a resolve that reminded Richie of Eddie at thirteen years old, calmly throwing his house keys at his father's feet, telling old Frank Kaspbrak that if he didn't like who Eddie was, then he didn't have to be Eddie's father anymore. In terms of regained memories, that one is by far the best. "She was clearly too important to be wasting her time with the talent, but she still had lunch with me on my first day, gave me a tour of the studio, all that. I think I signed a book for her?" Eddie frowned, trying to remember. "I remember I was impressed. She was funny, too." 

"Yeah, she's funny," Richie said. At the time, he hadn't really processed the fact of his own marriage yet, hadn't yet realized what he and Sandy needed to do. But he did feel a weird, forlorn sadness sitting there with Eddie - as if he were losing something, at the same time that he was getting something back. "Too good for me, really."

"Eleven years," Eddie said, sounding just as forlorn. He was studying Richie over the rim of his wine glass, his face looking even more angular in the dim light of the bar. "That's impressive, man. Really. Are you…"

"What?" 

"Are you happy?" Eddie asked. He looked like a painting, with his stylish suit jacket, thrown over a rumpled shirt of Ben's, borrowed out of necessity since most of his suitcase had been sacrificed to a literal murder scene, seized by the police as evidence in Patrick Hockstetter's death. (Open and shut, the sheriff told them, but still - maybe stick around until the DA decides not to press charges, and the Losers had meekly complied.) "Are you happy with her?"

Richie didn't reply, struck silent by the question. He didn't think anyone had ever asked him that before.

"That's none of my business," Eddie said, quickly backtracking in the face of Richie's silence. "Sorry - I don't mean to pry."

"You're not prying," Richie said. "I just - I don't know how to answer that. Am I happy?" He laughed incredulously. "What does that even mean?"

If anything, Eddie looked even sadder in response to that. "It means," he said haltingly, "it means what it sounds like, Rich. It means - you wake up every day excited to see her." He looked intensely at his drink, not making eye contact, and the tone in his voice made Richie shiver. "It means you have more good times than bad. That you spend more time making up than you do fighting."

"Uh," Richie said. 

"I sound like a Hallmark card, don't I?" Eddie shook his head. "Never mind. You don't have to answer."

"No, I just." Richie looked at him closely, feeling something strange and hot curling in his chest. "You never had that with Myra, huh?" Eddie shook his head silently. "I'm sorry, man."

"Don't - no," Eddie said. "It's not - it isn't like that. I knew what I was getting into," he said grimly. "I brought it on myself."

"Don't say that, Eds, you didn't do anything to - "

"I mean," Eddie interrupted shortly, "that I've always known what I wanted, who I am. I never forgot that. But I didn't think I could have it, and so I let myself settle into what I thought I deserved. So yes, I brought it on myself."

Richie didn't know what that meant, exactly, or what to say to make him feel better. Maybe there wasn't anything he could say. So he kicked Eddie's shin lightly, and made him smile, for lack of a better idea. 

"I always knew you'd find somebody great," Eddie said, a little wistfully. His eyes were big and dark, his dimples coming out as he smiled, but the expression still seemed sad. "Even when we were kids. I knew you'd find someone who would appreciate you, laugh at all your shitty jokes. I'm glad that happened for you, man."

Richie felt bereft, aching with pain at that thought, though he wasn't entirely sure why it hurt so much to hear. "My jokes aren't shitty," he attempted, fiddling with the cuff of his sleeve. "I was ahead of my time."

"If that makes you feel better," Eddie said, grinning out of the side of his mouth. "Then, sure. We can go with that."

"You know what I really missed?" Richie said. "Like what I was really missing, in my life? Your emotional support, Eds. That kind, subtle confidence you had in my superior intelligence and clever wit."

Eddie's face did something complicated, before it smoothed out again. "Oh yeah?" he said. "Is that what held you back from success? Me calling you a dipshit every twenty seconds would've really kicked your professional podcasting career into high gear, huh?"

"I mean, it probably would've helped," Richie said. He swallowed. "I'm sorry it didn't happen for you. You deserved that more than any of us."

Eddie shrugged, his face far away. "Maybe."

"No, you did. Everything you went through with your dad, Eds - sorry, I know you don't like to talk about it, sorry - "

"It's not that I don't want to talk about it," Eddie said slowly, his eyes moving softly around the room before settling on Richie again, instantly lighting up Richie's nerves like a wildfire. He felt like a slowly-burning match, flaring up each time Eddie looked at him, getting more and more scorched, backed into a corner of his own making by what he was feeling. "It's just - we don't have a lot of time left together - not that we won't stay in touch or anything, but still it just feels - "

"Precious," Richie said. 

"Right," Eddie replied softly. His face twisted. "Stan said. He told me he was happy."

Richie nodded, the lump in his throat so tight he couldn't speak. 

"I pictured you being happy too," Eddie said, stricken with some desperate emotion that made Richie feel like he was drowning. "I'm glad you are. I'm glad if it couldn't - I just always wanted you to be happy," he said haltingly, "whether I got to see it or not. You have no idea how relieved I am to know that you have been, Rich."

Richie still couldn't speak, tied up with guilt and pain about Stan, with some unnamed ache that he couldn't look at too closely because of the way Eddie was looking at him, like Richie was breaking his heart somehow, although Richie couldn't imagine how or why. And then, later, he felt guilty, as if he'd lied to Eddie by not telling him the whole truth, allowing him to think that Richie and Sandy were just blissfully and happily normal, well-adjusted and heterosexual, tucked away in their stupid fucking house in San Bernadino. Thanksgiving in Texas, Christmas in South Carolina. Some small, dumb part of Richie's heart even felt guilty for letting him down somehow, when he first broke the news to everyone about the divorce, as if Eddie was going to be disappointed in him somehow for not being happy. It was weird, the things that Eddie could make Richie feel sometimes. He wanted a lot of things from Eddie, and not all of them felt good. 

Scrolling through their text log, the long stretch of blue messages he'd sent with no replies, Richie definitely feels a little unhealthy. He still hasn't told Eddie what he'd told Bev, the real reason he needed to get a divorce, instead of taking Sandy to couples counseling or whatever. He's tested it out half a dozen times, typing the words, composing an email that he junks before he can even get the whole sentence out. His Google history is probably far beyond saving, at this point. _Gay pride dr k?_ only gave him pictures of Eddie shaking hands with Ru Paul. _Dr. K homophobic_ only took him to a Buzzfeed article titled _Eighteen Times Dr. K Saved our Lives AND Stole our Hearts._ (The top comment had said, _honestly the fact that he's never given us a shirtless photoshoot is homophobic,_ and it had fifty-two likes.) He's never made a public statement that could be taken as even remotely political, but he definitely gave Ben a whole ton of shit for all the Republicans he'd designed houses for, so...that's about as far as Richie's gotten, in terms of detective work. He's not confident. 

Part of being honest means being vulnerable, which is the part that Richie's always struggled with, and that's the ugly truth. Eddie, of all people, would probably understand, once Richie gathers his balls together and takes the leap. 

"Be proud," Stan had said, like he'd _known._ Then again, he probably had. He always had a knack for figuring out the ending before they even got halfway through a movie - it used to drive them all crazy, how he could guess the twist not even twenty minutes in, and worse - he was never _wrong_. Maybe that's why he'd been so scared at the Jade. If that's the case, Richie thinks, then Stan was probably the bravest person who ever lived, hands down. To know what will happen to you, and show up anyway - he can't think of anything that could ever top that. To be loved so much, by such a brave person - sometimes, in some ways, they were just so fucking lucky. 

Gathering his courage one night - and he's not even drunk! - Richie sends Eddie a link to one of the few passion projects he's been involved in over the past twenty years of his career - an NPR piece he produced in 2014 about a high school class in Iowa that raised almost ten thousand dollars for their drama teacher's cancer treatment. The teacher and his husband had been one of the first couples to get married when the Iowan Supreme Court struck down the gay marriage ban in 2009. Richie had done the narration - one of his biggest on-air pieces, actually, considering how little he really does speak on Genre Anatomy - and wrote most of the script himself, although a bunch of the legwork and research had been completed by one of the NPR reporters, a young hip new media type who works in development over at Hulu, now. The concluding portion of the script was all Richie though, and it embarrasses him now to listen to it - his own earnest voice, going on and on about representation and role models, which sounds so fake, so cliche now in 2017, even though Richie knows he'd meant every word earnestly. The ratings had been good, and his contacts at NPR told him they'd be more than open to it if he wanted to pitch something else, but Richie never did, for reasons now that seem both stupid and childish. He'd just been too scared, was the truth. 

Eddie doesn't reply until a couple of hours later, which Richie spends mostly pacing, and being talked off a ledge by Mike, who keeps wandering out onto the deck to make sure Richie hasn't thrown himself off the edge yet. Finally around dinner time, Eddie texts, _did you just fucking come out to me???_ and then starts ringing Richie's phone like a man possessed. Richie has to lay down on the deck chair and do some yoga breathing before he can even bring himself to answer. 

"Was that offensive? I didn't mean to be offensive but seriously what the fuck," Eddie says, "did you mean to imply something because I listened to the whole thing and your speech at the end sounded a little personal! Am I yelling?!"

"I, yes," Richie says, with his face still smushed against the deck chair, "I meant to imply, uh, that, yes. And yes, you're yelling."

"I don't know why I'm yelling!" Eddie yells. "Richie, I'm so proud of you. What the fuck! I need a Xanax."

"No, don't take drugs! I thought that's why you were mad at me, for doing drugs. You can't ice me out for doing drugs and then go do drugs yourself, man, that's not fair."

"I have a prescription," Eddie says pissily, and Richie laughs. Of course he does. "Rich, I gotta ask you something. I'm sorry I iced you out but I gotta ask you something. Is this why you left Sandy?"

He sounds almost manic, a little crazed, which is sort of hot, in a sad way. Richie groans. "Yes."

"What the fuck!"

"Why do you keep saying that?" Richie demands, smashing his face back into the chair again. "Are you mad?"

"No!" Eddie pauses, and Richie can practically hear the guy's blood pressure pounding. It's like, a psychic vibe. A vibe of stress. "Okay. I'm proud of you. You're my best friend. I gotta go."

"Wait, what?" Richie sits up, laughing a little incredulously. "Eddie, no, wait, let's talk for a little bit - this is such a big thing for me, and you've been mad at me, you haven't said a word to me in like, a week - "

"Rich, I just gotta go - I gotta do something," Eddie says, still sounding a little manic, "and if I don't do it now, I won't ever, so I gotta go. I love you. I mean - I'm proud of you. I mean - " Richie waits in incredulous silence, waiting for him to walk _that_ back, even a little, but he doesn't. "I'm sorry. I'm awful at this but I really do have to go do this. I'll call you in a couple hours."

"Eds," Richie says helplessly, not wanting to hang up, wanting something from him that he can't really articulate. A yearning feeling of hopelessness rises in his chest, sort of like the way he felt when he first saw Eddie at the restaurant, hugging Bev on the other side of the parking lot, tanned and handsome and the same face he'd been obsessing over for ten years, albeit a little more imperfect, less Photoshopped, more real. All his life, Richie has wanted things he never thought he could have, and even admitting it to himself was a struggle, because it was always easier to pretend like he never wanted them in the first place. With some things - some people - it always felt ridiculous, though. He wasn't that good at lying to himself. "What is it? What's so important?"

Eddie huffs. "I need to, um," he says, and then changes track abruptly, still sounding keyed up in a weird way, strung tight. "Who else knows? Did you tell anyone else? Does Sandy know?"

Richie blinks, taken aback by the rapid-fire questions. "Bev knows," he says. "Sandy knows. Yes. Sandy's known for a long time."

"Oh," Eddie says, his voice small. "You and Bev...in high school. I remember that."

"Yeah, that was - it wasn't like," Richie says, struggling to articulate it, "I wasn't intentionally lying or leading them on, I just couldn't - it was so hard for me to think about or talk about, and maybe that means I was using them in a way, but - God, I don't know - "

"Jesus, no. No, of course you weren't using them. I didn't mean to imply that, Rich."

"Don't call me that," Richie says, a little choked up. "Just call me 'Richie.' You said it a few seconds ago. I miss hearing you say it."

Eddie makes a strangled noise, high-pitched and desperate. Every hair on Richie's arms stands up at the sound, like the entire atmosphere around his body has just dropped a couple hundred degrees in half of a second. 

"Can't we just talk?" Richie asks, platinative. He feels distantly embarrassed, knowing how this sounds, but he can't help himself. "We talk all the time, but we still never _talk_. You know? Like how you've been living in LA for the past six months, but I still haven't fucking seen you in person. It's ridiculous. I miss you."

"You were going through a divorce," Eddie replies. "I didn't want to interfere. And then you left."

"Mike invited you!"

"I couldn't come! Not when I - " Eddie chokes, and changes track again. "Richie, I really have to go. I can't lose momentum, I have to do this."

"Do _what?_ "

"I'll tell you later! I'll call you later. I need to go." Eddie takes an audible deep breath that sounds almost painful, it's so quick and violent. Almost like a gasp. "I never thought you - _Richie._ " Richie shudders, closing his eyes. "All this time. I thought there was no chance. You were with Bev, and then Sandy, and they were just, they were so beautiful, just beautiful, stunning, amazing people. I wanted that for you, but I was also so - " Eddie stops again, and Richie wants to shout at him: _what the fuck! Finish that fucking sentence! What did you want, Eddie Kaspbrak!_ "Please, Richie, I have to go."

"Okay," Richie manages, feeling like he's standing on the edge of a cliff. "Just, okay, call me back."

"Okay," Eddie says, and hangs up. Richie drops the phone to the deck with a clatter, and presses his face back into the chair, and moans. He feels like he's just been run over by a semi truck. 

Mike wanders out after a while, probably drawn by the sounds of Richie's humiliated agony, and stands there sipping a cup of coffee, staring at him for a few seconds. Richie rolls his face over, fumbling to put his glasses back on so he can glare properly, and Mike just smirks. 

"Is something funny?" Richie asks. 

"Like, generally speaking?" Mike asks, gesturing with his coffee cup. "Or specifically, here on my deck?"

"I think," Richie says archly, "if we're following the rule of possession, then technically it's my deck at this point."

"We're not," Mike says. 

"Oh."

"I just think it's funny," Mike continues, coming over to lean on the back of Richie's deck chair. Richie flails a little when it tips backwards, reaching out to brace his hands against the floor to keep from falling over, "that Eddie is the only person who can rattle you like this. That's all."

"I'm not rattled," Richie says hotly, sounding very rattled. 

"Even when we were kids, it was the same," Mike says. He reaches down to pat Richie's head, ruffling his hair affectionately until Richie squirms away, batting at his hand. "I don't know that you know how...reassuring you are, Rich. You were always just...unflappable. That's why we would go to you for advice all the time. But then Eddie would show up, and you'd just fall to pieces - you'd just get so flustered and mixed up. It was funny then, and it's funny now."

"Okay, fuck you, thanks," Richie says miserably. "Glad to know I kept a firm lid on that big secret."

"Were you trying to keep it a secret, or were you just ignoring it?" Mike asks, patting him on the head again. Richie frowns, and then leans into it, letting his head fall back against the chair, feeling weirdly comforted by Mike's condescension, as he always does. "I'm hungry. Do you wanna order lunch, or make something?"

"Order," Richie says sullenly. "Comfort food. I want IHOP."

"If you want confetti pancakes you can pay for that shit yourself," Mike says. "I was kind of in the mood for pizza."

"Pepperoni," Richie says.

Mike pats his head again. "Sure, Rich," he says. 

Objectively, Richie knows that Eddie is famous. Like super duper mega famous. He has Emmys and shit, he's in the tabloids all the time. Bev is famous too, but in a model sort of way - her face is instantly recognizable to most of the American public, but in a vague, "hey that's the girl from that ad" sort of way. Eddie, on the other hand, has _fans._ Eddie has a TV show. Eddie has been on Oprah. Eddie is a comforting figure to thousands, if not millions, of health-concerned, family-oriented moms and dads, across Middle America and urban centers alike. 

Eddie does not call back that night, but he does text: _don't hate me please I'm in meetings with legal big stuff please don't be mad,_ which sounds harried and extreme enough that Richie feels a _little_ bit better. Waking up to the following push notification however, a trending topic from Twitter that says: _Health guru and talk show host Eddie "Dr. K." Kaspbrak comes out as gay in a statement on Instagram,_ sends his blood pressure soaring right back up again. 

Eddie's phone goes to voicemail. Richie calls him three times and then receives another text: _still in legal mtgs call as soon as i can sorry sorry sorry_ and so he wakes up Mike, who groggily scrolls through his own phone for a few minutes, and then drops it on the floor and yells, _what!_ at the top of his lungs, which is marginally more satisfying. 

It's hard not to read into it, it's hard not to assume things. Richie paces every corner of the house while Skyping with various combinations of the Losers, all of whom alternate between extreme smugness ("I knew it!" Ben says.) and careful sympathy ("Richie do you wanna call me later? Just one on one?" No thanks, Bev). He wonders, at varying levels of volume, if the "legal meetings" Eddie's referencing are in regards to his professional life, or his divorce, or possibly both. He texts Sandy a link to Eddie's coming out post (very calm, matter of fact, unapologetic, ruthlessly unsympathetic) with a string of exclamation points, to which she responds with her own paragraph of exclamation point emojis, and a gif of Jerry Seinfeld freaking out and running into a bush. 

He Googles Myra's name, which leads to her Twitter, which has an _amazingly_ passive-aggressive reaction, a tweet that simply says: _Thank you for all your sympathy. Obviously, it's been a trying time for me._ Richie sends a link to that to Eddie, which is perhaps ill-advised, but Eddie immediately responds with a frowny face and, _don't get me started._ Then, he sends a blurry picture of a conference room, an intimidating stack of papers on a glass table in front of him, and a half-drunk boba tea that's an intimidatingly bright pink color. _My assistant bought this for me because I'm gay now,_ says the caption. _Supportive, y/n?_

Richie has to bang his forehead against the counter a few times before he replies. _More info needed. What flavor_

_no idea, just tasted like sugar to me. I think maybe strawberry. Maybe raspberry. Small chance it was apple._

Eddie always picked out the strawberry gummies in the Welch's fruit packs his dad packed him for lunch, and gave them to Richie. The grapes and apples - everyone's least favorites - he loved. And he liked the raspberry ones, but for some reason, strawberry just "tasted weird." _Apple or raz, Y. Strawberry, N,_ Richie texts. _so results = inconclusive? Keep track of what she brings u tmrw. Need more data_

Eddie sends another picture, this time of a woman in her mid-twenties with braided pigtails, grinning and aiming a peace sign at the camera. _lunch break. She says it was supportive. Also says hi. Her name is Misty and I stole her from Myra. She's definitely worth the house in the Hamptons_

 _you had a house in the hamptons??????!!?!?!??_ Richie sends. His phone lights up with a call not even thirty seconds later. 

"Myra's idea," Eddie says, skipping the greeting altogether. "She liked being rich much more than she liked being married to me. Are you mad?"

"Eds, I am never mad at you," Richie says. "I am confused, perplexed, bamboozled quite frequently. But mad? Never."

"Bamboozled?" Eddie repeats, bemused. 

"Did you, or did you not, have an audible panic attack on the phone with me last night before hanging up, refusing to explain, and then coming out to millions of people eight hours later? Because that's what I remember happening and yes, it was bamboozling."

"I'm sorry, I should've explained," Eddie says apologetically. He sounds much calmer today. Maybe it's the boba. "It's something I'd been thinking about for so long, and then you did it, and I thought, 'if I don't do it now, something will happen, and I won't ever be able to.' Like I'm not sure what I thought was going to happen, exactly, if I was picturing like, a meteor falling on my head or something, but...that's how it felt."

"The gay meteor," Richie says, nodding. "Right. No. I get it. It's an image that haunts all of us."

"I'm sorry," Eddie says again. 

"You don't have to apologize. I was just worried," Richie says. "And I'm sorry too. I don't know if you're still mad at me for the other thing, but I am."

"I am and I'm not," Eddie says carefully. 

"Yes and no? That's your answer?"

"I'm a complicated person, Richie," Eddie says bitchily, in such an abrupt tone change it makes Richie startle. He laughs warmly, charmed by Eddie's sly way of making fun of himself, how he exaggerates his worst qualities sometimes to make Richie laugh. After a second, Eddie laughs too - a relieved sound, just as warm. "Listen - Christmas is next week."

"Right, I know that," Richie says slowly. 

"Are you staying at Mike's? Or going to see your folks, maybe? I wasn't sure if you had plans."

"I'm supposed to fly out Monday, yeah," Richie admits. "They conned me into staying two whole weeks, since I'm not working. Are you - what are your plans? Mike's meeting up with Bill in San Antonio. You could go with them, if you need an excuse to avoid New York."

Eddie is quiet for a second. "Not sure yet," he finally says. "I thought maybe - you could come see me, after. Like instead of going back to Arizona, you could fly to meet me somewhere."

Richie swallows hard. He's in the kitchen, ostensibly making dinner, but really he's just staring at the sink, trying not to lose it. Mike had locked himself in his office around noon, somehow sensing that Richie needed to progress through this freak out by himself, and Richie's been rattling around downstairs like a pinball ever since. "Somewhere? As in, not LA?"

"Yeah," Eddie says. "Anywhere you want. I guess I don't really care. Somewhere cold, maybe? With snow? I miss snow sometimes - I know I technically lived in New York, but I spent so much time in LA over the years, I might as well have lived here."

"I don't know where I'd want to go," Richie says, feeling kind of bamboozled again, "like, _anywhere_? Are you offering to run away with me, Eds?"

"If that's what you want to call it," Eddie says, and Richie almost drops the phone. "I just thought - 'maybe he doesn't like talking on the phone. Maybe that's why it's uncomfortable.' But...you talk to Bev. And then I thought, 'oh, he's still in love with her. That's why he left Sandy.' And I wanted to talk to you, Richie, but I didn't want to _push,_ but it was just - it was hard, and then you told me what you told me, so then I thought - "

"I'm sorry," Richie interrupts loudly, his heart beating in triple time, " _in love with Bev?!_ "

"She was your first girlfriend," Eddie says. "You guys were joined at the hip, back in the day. And Sandy looks a lot like her. It wasn't like it was a wild assumption, Richie."

"Is that what everyone thinks?" Richie exclaims, readjusting his viewpoint on all of his relationships, all at once. "Oh my fucking God. No."

"Well, I know that _now!_ " Eddie says, a little tetchy. "Listen, we don't have to talk about it now. I only have about ten minutes before I have to go back in, anyway - just, I dunno, think about it - come up with some ideas - "

"What are these big meetings about, anyway?" Richie asks. "Bev told me your divorce is almost finished. It's not about you coming out, is it? I mean - they can't hold that against you, in some way, can they? The network, or your management, or whoever - "

"No. It's about - the show," Eddie says. "I sort of...well. I put up that post this morning, and then I told my management that I wanted to quit. So the meetings are about my contract with the network. There are certain obligations, financially speaking, but - they think they can do it for me."

Richie finds himself struck silent, once more. "You're quitting?"

"Yes," Eddie says. The certainty reminds him of Sandy's texts: one word, period. No argument. "I'm done. I'm just...tired of it all. You guys were right to make fun of me, you know - it's mostly just bullshit. I don't even believe half of what I say anymore. I remember, you know - in the beginning, what it was like to feel like I was helping people. That part, I know I can get back somehow, if I really try. The part where I felt...good." Eddie sighs, sounding frustrated, like he's fumbling for words almost. "But not like this. Not with the train I'm on right now. I have to just get off, and start over somewhere new. It's your fault," he says suddenly, "being brave, and all that shit. All your fault."

Richie grips the side of the sink and lets out a watery, thin laugh. "I think the word is 'inspiring,' Eds. I'm inspiring."

"You're a lot of things, Richie," Eddie says, so fond it makes Richie's knees go weak. Yes, he knows what he wants. He maybe knows what Eddie Kaspbrak wants, too. If he could be so brave to say it. "Think about it. Come up with a list."

"Bermuda," Richie says instantly. "Monte Carlo."

"Okay, I'm rich, but I'm not Oprah," Eddie says. 

"Come on, man, you make Oprah _money,_ " Richie says. "You can afford to take me to Monte Carlo. I wanna gamble."

"I've never been to Monte Carlo. Is there gambling there?"

"I saw it in a movie," Richie says quickly. He looks down at his hand against the ceramic sink, white-knuckled and tense, the faucet slowly dripping water, the little pile of dirt that's fallen out of the small, sad-looking cactus on the windowsill that looks out over the deck. He wants to remember this moment for the rest of his life, what it felt like, where he was, what he was looking at. Like he'll remember the first time he saw Eddie again, that jolt of recognition deep in his chest: _oh, it's you. You're the one._ "You don't want me to just come home, Eds? You close on your new place soon, right? I could come see it. Help you decorate."

"I want to go somewhere new," Eddie says. "With you. I want to go somewhere just me and you, and I want to tell you some things about my life, and get to know you again. And then if you want, then we can go home, and you can decorate my new house. But I don't want posters, Richie," he says, and Richie chokes on another laugh, "there are no framed posters of indie rock stars in my house. I'm a grown up."

"What about strategically arranged license plates? Are framed vinyl records on the 'hard no' list?"

Eddie laughs. "Let me ask Misty and get back to you. She's cooler than we are, she'll know where the zeitgeist is on license plates."

"Okay." Richie bites his lip, kicking the cupboard with the toe of his foot. He feels like there's a live wire underneath his skin, sparking dangerously with nervous energy. "Eds, you know I'm proud of you too, right? We sort of skipped over some parts in this conversation, I feel like."

"And I feel like that's my fault," Eddie says. 

"I mean, sort of," Richie says, and Eddie laughs. "I wanted to talk to you too, you know. It was just fucking hard, man, that's all. It wasn't personal."

"I know," Eddie says softly. 

"You're kind of intimidating," Richie says, laughing this time out of embarrassment, "and I don't mean because you're famous, because - you know, you're a hack and all - "

"Thanks," Eddie says, stammering with incredulous laughter. 

"- but because I want to impress you, and that's - humiliating, that I just said that out loud. Wow," Richie says, rubbing below his eye, laughing with nerves again. "That's not the only reason. But it's a reason. I'm not ashamed of my life or anything, but I want you to like it. The things that I've done, and the person I am now. I was, I guess, scared that you wouldn't, and that was part of the reason why."

"I like everything about you," Eddie says quietly, earnestly. Richie closes his eyes, letting that sink down into his bones. "I've always liked everything about you. You don't have to try so hard with me, Richie, you've had me since the beginning."

Richie stands there in that moment for a second, trembling, before he says, "I do like it when you call me 'Richie.' It's so much better than 'Rich.' 'Rich' is like, somebody's investment banker, Eds. Not somebody you could actually talk to."

"I was trying to be cool," Eddie says, with a shaky laugh. He makes a sound, as if to say something, but stops abruptly, murmuring something to someone on his side of the line. " - okay yeah, just one more second. Listen, Richie," he says, "I've gotta go back in but I'll call you later, if that's okay? We can talk travel plans. Think about where you want to go - seriously, anywhere. Monte Carlo, even. I'll play craps with you if you want."

"I want to hike Mount Everest with you, Eds," Richie says, a clean, burning feeling in his chest, "I want to like, jump off a plane with you. You impulsive motherfucker."

"I'm definitely not doing _that_ ," Eddie says, but he still sounds like he's laughing. "I'll talk to you later. Tonight, okay?"

"Tonight," Richie says, smiling wildly down at the sink. The sun, shining directly in from the window, is making him sweat, glinting off his glasses every time he moves his head. He's barely even noticed. "Okay."

"Bye, Richie," Eddie says, the same way he'd always end phone calls when they were kids, always needing to be the last one to say it. Sometimes they'd stay on the phone for an extra twenty minutes, just going back and forth saying goodbye over and over, because Eddie was a neurotic little freak who _needed_ to have the last word so badly he was willing to risk his dad's wrath to get it. Feeling generous, Richie lets him have it this time, holding the phone to his ear long after Eddie's already hung up, staring out the window at the bright, desert sunlight. 

Jump off a plane? Sure. Nothing could be scarier, or better, than this. Richie takes a deep breath, and starts to believe it.


End file.
